


Feasting on Dreams, Volume Four: Waking in Shadows

by analect



Series: Feasting on Dreams [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama, F/M, Fantasy, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-12
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2017-10-27 06:08:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 134,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/analect/pseuds/analect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merien Tabris always thought the Dalish were a myth but, faced with irrefutable proof of their existence, she begins to question her own elven identity, and risks losing herself - and endangering her greater quest - as the clan's dark secrets unfold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> And here it is - Volume Four! Welcome back to those who've been with this series from the beginning (or are just catching up), and hello to any new readers. For anyone just joining, Feasting on Dreams is a multi-volume Origins playthrough epic (*grin*), but with a great deal of sprawling detail and City Elf baggage. It shouldn't be necessary to read Vols 1-3 to know what's going on here but, in any case, quick recap:
> 
> Merien Tabris and her companions are journeying to the Brecilian Forest to seek out the Dalish, having just reclaimed Soldier's Peak in the nearby Southron Hills [yes, I messed with geography]. Time is of the essence as, although Redcliffe has been saved, and both Connor and the Circle of Magi have been liberated of their demons, Arl Eamon still lies deathly ill, and the Sacred Ashes appear to be his only hope.
> 
> Still raw from their recent - and extremely ill-fated - trip to Denerim, Merien believes her family to have perished in the alienage purge, and is struggling to come to terms with her role as a Grey Warden... and a few other, more personal confusions.
> 
> ~ Any reviews, concrit, feedback etc. are, as ever, most appreciated. ;)
> 
> Also, disclaimer: Not mine, don't own, will wipe the jam and fingerprints off and put back nicely when I've finished. Promise.

**Feasting on Dreams: The Book of Merien Tabris**

**VOL. 4: WAKING IN SHADOWS**

\----------------------------------------------------------------

I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.  
~ Aeschylus, _Agamemnon_

\----------------------------------------------------------------

**CHAPTER ONE**

It began to rain not half a day after we put the foothills of the Southrons behind us. We were heading north, to the small pass through the hill country that led to the Brecilian Forest, and though we were a fair way off the road, sticking to side-trails and thin paths through the rough ground, I could still make out the dark ghost of Dragon’s Peak from time to time. It flitted in and out of sight on the horizon, whenever the trees parted enough to allow it.

There definitely _were_ more trees. I kept looking at them nervously, uncomfortable for two reasons. Firstly, I still wasn’t used to the damn things. All those weeks ago, when I’d made that long ride to Ostagar with Duncan, being surrounded by vegetation instead of the comforting solidity of walls and roofs had left me feeling unsettled and exposed. It wasn’t as bad now as it had been; I was used to it, more or less, but that didn’t mean I never felt like the trees were watching.

Then, of course, there was the fact that—as Zevran, Morrigan, Sten, and Wynne had already discovered while the rest of us had been making our ill-fated little sortie to Denerim—some of them probably were. Or, at least, they were sentient enough to sense movement, and to attack.

Possessed trees…. I winced at the very thought. That was what Wynne said they were, anyway. Spirits that found their way through a weakened portion of the Veil, and inhabited the nearest source of life, only to become imprisoned by bodies that could not see, hear, speak or feel. Unable to find their way out again, the demons were driven mad, trapped and howling in their wooden prisons. It was a horrible idea, and it shouldn’t have seemed possible, yet I believed it. I wished I didn’t, but after everything we’d seen at Redcliffe, the Circle Tower, and most recently Soldier’s Peak, it had started to seem as if demons were everywhere, in every stone, branch and leaf. The darkspawn would almost have been a welcome change.

Zevran no longer wore his sling, though his left arm was noticeably still a little weaker than the other. Wynne’s healing—and the hedgemage bonesetter they’d been forced to take recourse to—had done wonders, but I remembered how pale and ill he’d looked when we’d met up at the rendezvous point. Trees that attacked the unwary, and could split an arm open like a baked potato… no matter how he’d tried to make light of the wound, I knew how much worse it could have been, and I was at least a little convinced that, if I hadn’t split the group up the way I had, it wouldn’t have happened.

In any case, the closer we got to the forest, and the pass, the more I glared at every single pine tree.

I told myself there was no use dwelling on it. Denerim had hardly been a bed of roses anyway. The alienage lay purged, everyone I knew or cared for probably dead, and Loghain’s bounty on the Wardens was common enough knowledge to make things dangerous. Then there had been the lack of leads on Brother Genitivi, and that whole mess with Alistair’s half-sister… and, frankly, as I just about felt able to admit in the privacy of my own head, the mess I’d managed to get into with Alistair himself.

It was stupid. I _knew_ that, so what in the Maker’s name had I been thinking?

We hadn’t spoken much since breaking camp; in fact, we didn’t speak much at all that first day. Every time I looked at him, I remembered that kiss, and as much nervous terror as warm and fuzzy pleasure assailed me. It was a ridiculous thing to have done… a ridiculous thing to _want_ , and yet I did. I wanted it to happen again, and I wanted to have his arms around me, and see that uncertain, beautiful smile of his, and believe that there was more to life than the threat that currently faced us.

I shouldn’t want to. It was all wrong. To start with, he was human, and I wasn’t a whore. I’d been brought up with morals, values… all those things that should have made me revolt from the very idea of letting a shem touch me. Only Alistair wasn’t a shem. He was just _him_ —I’d told him that much, hadn’t I?—and, anyway, we were both Grey Wardens. That was what I was now; not elven, not a woman, not even a product of the alienage I missed so dearly, and yet for the first time in my life truly saw for the squalid pit it was.

I was a Warden, and nothing more.

One life, one duty. Sten had told me that. As we tramped damply along the rutted little side road, with his heavy footfalls beating time at the back of the group, and Maethor scouring the path ahead and occasionally giving half-hearted woofs at passing birds or squirrels, I wished I had the qunari’s unshakeable sense of purpose.

“You seem very deep in thought,” Wynne said gently, drawing a little nearer to me as she walked.

A chill marked the air, and the rain had already begun settling on her hair, twisting a few grey strands into a halo of frizz that sprung out to frame that clean, angular face. She had her hands folded into the sleeves of her robes for warmth, flashes of the deep red fabric peeking out from under the dull brown of her cloak in moments of contrast that came with every step.

I blinked. “Hm? Oh. Maybe a little. I… I don’t know.”

“The Peak certainly gave us all a lot to think about,” Wynne observed, her voice quiet as her gaze flicked towards Alistair.

For a moment, I wondered if she knew about the kiss, but I dismissed it as unlikely. He was walking at the head of our peculiar troupe, near enough, just behind Morrigan’s long-legged striding (she always seemed so much more at home with the open country around her), and Maethor’s constant figure-of-eight paths over the road. The rain had taken the gold from his hair and darkened it to brown and, even as I reminded myself not to stare, I noticed the way the wet was settling in under the straps of his pack, allowing twin blooms of dampness to form on the shoulders of his cloak. Before long, he’d probably start that tuneless whistling he was given to; irritating as a squeaky floorboard, but somehow by now an indelible part of all those long hours of walking.

“Yes,” I said softly. “I suppose it did. I… I’ve been thinking a lot about the Grey Wardens. Everything they were… everything they _should_ be.”

The words slipped from me when I didn’t really mean them to, and they betrayed me. Wynne just nodded, like she already knew what I meant. Maybe she did. I recalled the story she’d told around the campfire, of that allegorical battle filled with griffons and majestic, noble sacrifices, and bit my lip thoughtfully.

Up ahead, Alistair started whistling through his teeth. The rain pattered a little harder, and I saw Leliana smile to herself. I wasn’t sure why until, after a few moments, she started to hum, evidently able to distinguish a melody from Alistair’s tuneless efforts.

He glanced at her, grinned, and then together they were producing an almost entirely recognisable version of _My Heart Belongs to Another_. They made a good pair, I supposed.

“You have quite a burden on your shoulders,” Wynne agreed. “But you have not given up. That gives me hope… and you should be proud of all you have accomplished so far.”

I wrinkled my nose. “We’ve had a lot of help.”

“Still,” she maintained, “it has not been easy.”

“No.”

The wordless curls of the song filled the silence, incongruously jaunty and cheerful. It was a tune I remembered being played in the alienage, scratched out on an old fiddle and clapped along to on the cold, bright nights of Wintersend, when we squandered our pennies on ale and candles, and danced until our feet ached.

_Oh, if I should dance  
And if I should sing,  
Or tarry wi’ you, dear,  
It shan’t mean a thing,  
For my heart belongs to another!_

It was one of those songs that was meant for raucous crowds, and for the gale of laughter that always accompanied the last line of every verse, as the spoilt, childish lover of the story philandered his way through a phalanx of girls, always protesting that his real loyalty lay elsewhere.

_Oh, and now we’ve kissed  
And I’ve paid my court,  
I’ll tell you, dear,  
It was only sport,  
For my heart belongs to another! _

It was a warning, I’d always thought, about pretty words and easy routes, and part of me yearned to be back in that little shell of my past  
—a past now burned to ash, thanks to that bastard Loghain—when all I thought I had to worry about was getting landed with an inconstant, selfish fool of a husband.

For a brief moment, I thought of Nelaros, and the weight of the ring I wore at my neck—together with the silver pendant from my Joining—seemed heavier, the thin edge of the metal pressing into my skin beneath my undershirt. I had no idea what he’d have been like as a husband, yet his dying the way he had meant I really had no choice but to assume the best of him.

Anything else felt like a betrayal.

Leliana’s smooth, sweet voice carried beautifully; it almost seemed as if it should stop the rain from falling. I blinked again, shaking the dust of old memories from behind my eyes, and trying to shy away from the bitter taste that lay on my tongue.

“And you wonder sometimes, don’t you?” Wynne said, her voice a soft but insistent murmur at my shoulder. “How things would have been if it had all happened to someone else?”

My shoulders hunched in a small, reflexive shrug. She was right—of course she was—but I didn’t really want to admit it.

“Maybe,” I offered grudgingly.

It was true that I’d have given anything to change what had happened on the day of the wedding; anything to have spared Shianni, and Nelaros, and Nola. The purge wouldn’t have happened then, and everyone would have been better off, and Duncan would probably have got to Ostagar sooner, and… well, maybe _everything_ would have been different. I didn’t know and, in all honesty, I hadn’t really thought about that, because there was no point thinking on things that couldn’t be changed. Regretting the pain that others had suffered was one thing, but I’d never been brought up to bemoan my own fate; just to get on with it and make the best of things.

I hadn’t been doing too well at that, had I? Father would, I reflected, probably have told me to pull myself together and not to allow myself this indulgent melancholy. I’d tried, as well as I could… but it was hard to leave it behind, especially when I was afraid of letting all the things I remembered slip away. What else is grief, but the effort of holding onto the last vestiges of something one is terrified of losing forever?

Wynne didn’t say anything. It was a knack she had; a way of making you talk just with her silence. Certainly, she wormed the words out of me.

“I mean, it’s just… I’ll never have a normal life, will I?” I peered tentatively at the mage, my hair growing ever damper in the misty rain, and plastering itself down over my eyebrows. “Even if we survive this, even if—”

“No,” she said calmly. “You won’t.”

I stopped, mouth still half-open. Somehow, I’d expected some sort of platitude. She just smiled sadly at me, those clear blue eyes hard as pebbles, but the lines around her mouth were soft, her thin lips gently curled.

“That was… blunt,” I said carefully.

Ahead of us, Maethor pranced and barked at a bird in the branches of a tree. It cackled and took off, a flash of black and white plumage proving it to be a large magpie. I noticed Zevran wince and, very briefly, the fingers of his right hand flicked in a brushing motion. I stifled a smile, never having expected him to be the superstitious type.

“Perhaps it was.” Wynne shrugged. “But were you expecting an ‘Oh, I’m sure you will! You’ll have dozens of babies and die happy and old in your bed’?”

I looked at her in surprise, a little taken aback by the steely undercurrent in her voice. There was more venom there than I was used to hearing from her, though it was buried deep, and it didn’t seem to be directed particularly at me.

She shook her head. “Well, you won’t. And if I had said that, it would have been a lie, and I would have been doing you an injustice.”

I winced. Her words stung more than I could have expected. Oh, it was one thing to _know_ about the taint and the bleak future that awaited me, even if we didn’t all die in some sudden, horrible way long before I ever started to develop the corruption, but quite another to be so irrevocably presented with the fact that other people knew too.

I liked Wynne, and I trusted her, but to know even she looked at me and saw a creature marked by this fate—barren, and bound irrevocably to a destiny that couldn’t end well—only served to underline how rootless and afraid I felt.

Not for the first time, a small part of me wondered how much she’d known about the Grey Wardens’ rituals, even before the aftermath of Ostagar. She was a senior enchanter of the Circle, after all, and it was my suspicion they knew a great deal more of the magics that went into the Joining than mages who were entirely innocent of the dark arts ought.

Of course, it felt ungrateful to think that way, given everything I owed to her. I recovered myself, and nodded slowly.

“Yes. I suppose I should thank you for that.”

“I appreciate it must feel… unfair.” Wynne smiled tightly. “You know, as a young girl, when I first came to the realisation that the Circle would be my life, and I would know no other, I did not take it well.”

“Didn’t you?”

Although I had little wish to hear someone else’s pale comparison, I knew she meant well… or I assumed so.

She shook her head. “No. It was knowing all those things that others took for granted—a simple life, love… even a family—were beyond my reach. It made me very moody.”

Well, _that_ was something I definitely had trouble picturing, and I tried to suppress an incredulous smirk, despite the way her words plucked at me. Wynne gave me a narrow-eyed look that fell just shy of reproach, and smiled.

“I suppose that is hard to imagine, isn’t it? Well, I was young once, you know.”

“No, I―”

She tutted, and didn’t let me finish.

“Believe it or not, my dear, I was. And all I could think of was being trapped in that tower, with no way out and no end in sight. I started hating my life, and myself, and one night I found myself in the tower’s chapel.”

I nodded politely, fervently hoping this wouldn’t be a story with a religious theme. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in the Maker, at least to an extent… after all, I’d been brought up in that nominal kind of Andrasteanism we had in the alienage, where faith was a value of respect, like cleanliness, and we saw no reason to argue with the Maker’s abandonment, because we expected to be discarded, and we were so very good at latching onto things that allowed our people to see themselves as victims.

Still, my practical experiences of religion had not found it all that useful as a salve—and even less so recently than in previous years. After Mother died, I’d been able to glean a very little comfort from the Chantry; after Redcliffe, and Ostagar, and the new realities in my life that had so little to do with the sisters’ teachings, it was harder to find consolation there.

“Well, anyway, I must have looked tearful,” Wynne went on, with a disparaging twist of her lips, “or made some noise or something, because the revered mother decided to speak to me. I had no one else to talk to, so I talked to her. I said many silly things, I’m sure… but she told me something that stuck with me. She said that the Maker puts us all on our paths for a reason, and fighting our intended course is what causes so much anguish.”

I bit down on the urge to grimace. So much for Wynne’s bluntness… the preachy schoolmarm epithet Morrigan had awarded her suddenly seemed that little bit more apt. I stared at the path ahead, watching the rain-dampened ruts turning to mud, and our various sets of footprints squelching into the ground.

“Hmm. And, uh, that made you feel better, did it?”

Wynne scoffed and shook her head vehemently. “Hah, no! I thought the old biddy was full of rubbish. I was fifteen, maybe sixteen, and I knew _everything_. I stormed off in a huff, of course.”

I looked up at her, unable to hide my grin. She smiled, and I got the feeling she’d been playing my reactions, and my second-guessing her, the whole time. I should have known better than to let her do it, I supposed, and I sniggered, a little chagrined by my gullibility.

Her smile faded, and I understood that the story had a serious core… even if I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it.

“Nevertheless,” Wynne said quietly, “I always found my way back to that chapel and, as the years passed, I began to see the truth of her words. We were supposed to be polar opposites—mage and priest—but we weren’t. There was much about us that was the same.”

I frowned, unsure whether this was some indirect comment about universal brotherhood—or sisterhood, as the case may be—or whether Wynne was trying to cast herself in the role of spiritual advisor.

Maethor had bounded on ahead a short way, putting up another bird. He seemed to consider the fact they could fly away from him a personal insult. The smell of sap and wet earth hung heavily on the air and, between the dank shapes of the trees, I could see the swell on the horizon changing. We were bearing east by northeast, according to Alistair and the map that I still didn’t understand how to read. I just hoped we’d find somewhere relatively comfortable to make camp before dark, or before the rain got too much worse.

I wet my lower lip with a hesitant tongue. “It’s not the same, though, is it? I mean, priests have to choose to be priests. Mages don’t.”

Wynne arched one thin, grey brow, but her expression didn’t betray outright disapproval. “Not all priests choose their path,” she said, making me feel rather ignorant. “Some children are given to the Chantry when they are very young, and raised there.”

My gaze moved at once to Alistair’s broad back, and I blinked hurriedly before snatching my attention away. He obviously hadn’t heard; the humming and whistling had stopped, and he was talking to Leliana about something. I didn’t know what, but she was gesticulating and smiling prettily.

I shot a glance at Wynne. “Yes. I… I suppose they are, aren’t they?”

“Indeed.” The look on her face softened, growing contemplative. “Many of those children may become initiates, and feel there is no other place for them. The revered mother had lived in the Chantry all her life, as I had been in the tower for all of mine. It would have been easy for her to be bitter, but she taught me that you can find fulfilment in duty… in living for others, loving your work and putting it, and the people around you, before yourself.”

I took a long, slow breath in, raising my chin as my boots thudded dully against the mud. The rain was falling more heavily, and my fringe kept poking into my eyes, my lashes matting as I blinked the water away.

“Ah. The joy of self-sacrifice?”

There was a trace of haughty disdain in my voice. I heard it, and wished I’d done better at concealing it but, in all honesty, what could the woman have expected? I’d lived my whole life for other people, as much by the accident of my birth itself as the choice to adhere to the rules and values we had back home. All right, perhaps I’d not been as chained as Wynne had—though we’d still had our walls, oh, yes—but the anger rose in me all the same. I’d been my father’s daughter, taken the woman’s role in our house; I’d cooked and cleaned and scrubbed, fetched water and washed clothes, and made myself busy when the men were talking… all those things. I’d acquiesced to his wishes at every turn, whether it was in restricting myself to gate trade instead of looking for work in the market, or a place in service, or so carefully guarding my honour and my reputation the way he’d wanted. And yes, maybe I’d believed in it, maybe I’d been so hard inured to Father’s view of the world that I thought that _did_ make us better… that it made _me_ better than the girls who worked for the human stallholders, trading in smiles and favours, or the girls who went to the bad, as the older folk called it, and ended up with round-eared babies on their hips and no honour to their names, but that didn’t matter.

What mattered was that I’d been due my life; due that day when I would marry, and have as much independence as any elven woman ever did… until even that was taken away.

I huffed out the breath I’d barely realised I was holding, and watched it mist on the air in front of me.

Did I believe that? It was hard to tell anymore. Maybe the anger I felt, the pain of loss and betrayal, blinded me even to my own memories. Wynne was right, as she so often was, of course. I remembered the sense of peace and safety, and even pride, that came with setting dinner down in front of Father in a clean house, and knowing I’d done right for the day. I remembered, too, the love and affection in his face when he’d so awkwardly tried to broach the subject of the matchmaker with me for the first time—not long after my fourteenth birthday—and asked if there was anyone I had my eye on. I’d laughed, blushed, furiously denied it… and said I’d take any match at all, if it meant being able to stay in Denerim, and to stay with him.

The hints of worn old leather and soap seemed to pull on the air, and the weight of tears pressed suddenly behind the bridge of my nose. I forced it down, forced it away, determined not to let myself imagine the burned husk of our house, or the bodies of my family, wrapped up in rough shrouds and dumped at the paupers’ fields to be burned with countless strangers, the way Mother had been.

“I… think you understand what I mean,” Wynne said carefully, her quiet, assured tones pulling me back with rough abruptness to the damp, rutted path, and the smell of trees and dank earth. “There can be joy in knowing that you are part of a greater purpose, despite all you give up for it. And you don’t need to be alone. Sometimes, we can find a family in the people around us, and a kind of security in duty, and a higher goal.”

I nodded curtly, but said nothing, and she let the matter drop. I was grateful for that, though her words continued to clatter around my head, and the rain continued to fall.

__  
**~o~O~o~**   


We broke to make camp late that afternoon. It was wet, and cold, and we were losing the daylight quickly. It would have been possible to keep going through the dusk, and even long into the night itself—such were the benefits of travelling with mages who could provide better light than a few crude torches—but we seemed to have an unspoken accord that we should measure our strength before entering the forest.

The clearing we picked was comfortable enough, as muddy patches of nowhere went, and we divided into those routine tasks with silent efficiency, much as we were used to doing, although Morrigan declared she was going to find some fresh meat for the pot, and disappeared into the trees. No one appeared eager to ask what she meant to hunt, or how. We’d been on the road long enough not to want to know, I think.

Still, I’d have liked to have found somewhere with a brook or something, or at least a few brackish puddles. Though Bodahn had furnished us with plenty of supplies before we left him and Levi at the Peak—including quite a few things I was sure we hadn’t actually _needed_ to buy, such as the travellers’ lute now hidden away in Leliana’s pack—water was precious, and as there was no way of knowing how long we might be in the forest, rations were tight. There was nothing to spare for washing or cleaning, and there probably wouldn’t be until we were into the forest itself. It wouldn’t be long now. I wasn’t sure whether I was looking forward to it with more anticipation or fear.

I’d said we would spend no more than a day or so looking for the Dalish. If they were there, we’d find them. If not, we would about turn and head for Lake Calenhad and the ever-elusive Genitivi. I’d promised that; been adamant about it, in fact… but somehow I knew I wouldn’t give up on the idea of the wild elves so easily.

Morrigan returned just as the tents were going up, and Sten had got the fire crackling, despite the damp. The rain had settled to a light drizzle instead of the heavy fall that had threatened earlier, but it was no less insidious. That fine, delicate mist of it got into everything, and chilled a body to the bone, until it was hard to remember a time when you’d been warm and dry.

The witch had four rabbits with her; all kills so clean I wondered how she’d done it, and then decided I didn’t need to know. Somehow, I felt better about eating meat Maethor had caught, despite having to wipe the dog drool off before it went in the pot.

Leliana was cooking, and the mabari had spread himself out in front of the fire, belly baking next to the flames, while Alistair and Wynne were talking quietly by her tent. I wondered if he was getting the same ‘joy in duty and self-sacrifice’ speech that I’d had. Maybe she didn’t think he needed it. Maybe he really didn’t. Despite everything we’d seen at Soldier’s Peak, and the revulsion we’d both felt at the things that had been allowed to corrupt the order under Warden-Commander Dryden, Alistair’s core of belief in the Grey Wardens seemed undimmed. He needed it to be that way, I suspected, though I wasn’t sure how truly distinct the Grey Wardens and Duncan were in his mind. I told myself it wasn’t my place to speculate. We all kept ourselves moving forwards in whatever ways we could.

With the smell of broiling rabbit on the air, along with that of dried vegetables and barley bubbling in about three-quarters of an inch of water, I headed across the camp to Zevran’s tent. He was sitting on a blanket at the mouth of it, cross-legged, his feet bare as he industriously polished his freshly cleaned boots.

He looked up as I drew nearer, and raised one golden brow. “Ah, and to what do I owe the pleasure of your company, o my bedazzling mistress?”

“I’m not your mistress,” I said briskly, though without any real snappishness.

He smirked. “Mmm. I can think of a number of other, more pleasing titles. Perhaps—”

“Don’t you dare,” I muttered, in case he came out with anything as bad as, or even worse than, ‘deadly sex goddess’. I hadn’t quite forgiven him for that.

I stopped by the guy rope of his tent and crossed my arms, biting my lip thoughtfully as I watched him work. “Matter of fact, I wanted to ask you something before supper.”

“Oh?”

He didn’t look up. I chewed on my lip some more, and frowned as I peered at his bare feet. They were in a much better state than mine. Notwithstanding a few calluses, blisters, and pads of hard, thickened skin, they were elegant… delicate, almost. I could see the dark lines of a tattoo, not unlike the one on his cheekbone, curling around the back of his right ankle, reaching from the arch of the foot itself up towards his calf—and then I blinked and looked away pointedly, because I was damned if he was going to see me studying his flesh.

“Yes.” I cleared my throat. “Um. I, er, just wondered… what’s your opinion of the Dalish?”

“My opinion?” Zevran glanced up at me warily, but didn’t stop buffing the boot. “Should I have one?”

I sighed and rubbed a weary hand over my forehead. “All right, what you _know_ of them, then.”

“Ah, I see.”

His mouth curled softly, but his eyes grew hard, and his cloth worked industriously at the leather. I couldn’t help but think of what he’d told me about the smell of fresh leather reminding him of home. It had been a very touching story, in its way, although I wasn’t sure whether I thought him truthful enough to accept it at face value. To me, Zevran seemed more than capable of constructing his own mythology… although, having grown up with the smells of tanneries, butchers, and dung heaps all around me, I was prepared to admit it had the ring of truth.

He shrugged, and glanced up at me as he continued to rhythmically polish the boot. The fine leather glimmered dully, the intricate tooling on it looking like some kind of glistening serpent. “I know little enough of the Dalish other than the fact that my mother was one. Or so I was told.”

I blinked, surprised. “Really?”

Maybe I’d expected Dalish ancestry to leave a more tangible print on a person; some mark of wildness or feral pride, perhaps. Zevran didn’t seem that way to me, with his overt worldliness, his fancy clothes, the prettified hair, the tattoos, and that thin loop of gold through his ear. He was a foreigner, in every possible sense of the word, and though I was under no illusions that the cultured, well-polished charm he exuded hid anything other than a dangerous, vicious creature, it wasn’t anything like the way I imagined the Dalish to be.

Evidently, my surprise was both obvious and amusing to him. He smirked, and patted the ground beside him, inviting me to sit and hear the tale. I did, though I hunched my knees up and clasped my arms protectively around them, like some old maid nervous of flirtation. Truth be told, that was rather how I felt, especially next to Zevran’s graceful, bare-thighed, feline sprawl.

“Indeed.” He smiled thinly, the smell of leather polish sharp and greasy on the air between us, and the cloth working in those supple, smooth movements. “She fell in love with a woodcutter and accompanied him back to Antiva City, leaving her clan behind for good… or so the story went. There, of course, the woodcutter died of some filthy disease and my mother was forced into prostitution to pay off his debts. Oldest tale in the book.”

I winced. It wasn’t so much the story—I knew too much of elven poverty to be terribly surprised by it—but the way the words left him that shocked me. There was a very slight trace of regret in his voice, yet it was all but drowned in a glib, almost flippantly cynical tone. I couldn’t tell whether he was lying, or whether he’d just told the story so often it had ceased to have meaning… or if he even cared at all.

“I didn’t know my mother, either, of course,” he said with a slight shrug, those amber eyes apparently considering the job of work he’d done on his left boot. “She died giving birth to me. My first victim, as it were.”

He smiled mirthlessly at that, and glanced up in time to see the grimace of horror I hadn’t been quick enough to wipe from my face.

“Zevran, that’s horrible! I mean, I—”

I intended to say I was sorry about his mother, but I didn’t get a chance. One golden brow flicked dispassionately, and he spat on the toe of his boot, working the saliva into the leather in one last layer of patina.

“Is it? Hmm. It seemed normal enough a tale growing up, no different than the other elven boys in the whorehouse.”

He seemed almost to relish saying that word; I supposed he wanted to shock me. What Zevran had insisted on calling my ‘aura of innocence’ appeared to amuse him, and apparently gave him an urge to bait me that I was not yet sure was entirely without cruelty.

I understood a little more in that moment, however. The woodcutter, the love story… if it sounded like he didn’t care, it was probably because he didn’t believe it was true.

“Your father’s family couldn’t do anything, then?” I asked cautiously.

The rhythm of his polishing cloth faltered, ever so briefly.

“I have no idea. I never knew the man. As to whether he even _had_ family….”

“I see,” I said, nodding slowly.

And, yes, perhaps I was just a little smug. In the alienage, we took care of our own, even if the tenuousness of their bonds stretched ‘extended family’ right out into ‘grossly attenuated family’. Blood was blood, however watered down, and I was very slightly gratified by that, given how disparaging Zevran had been about alienages before.

Of course, as I was well aware, another possibility lingered behind the words. Better to tell a small child his mother and father loved each other, than to say he is the product of a perfunctory rut where money provided the only consent.

I frowned as I thought of the night Alistair had told me the truth of _his_ parentage, and my anger had evaporated as I saw the worries that plagued him. He was afraid not just of the legends that touched his father’s blood, but of the precise circumstances of his conception, and his half-sister’s words would have done absolutely nothing to assuage that.

I felt grateful, somehow, knowing that—even though they’d married as virtual strangers, the way our traditions tended to dictate—Father had grown to love Mother very deeply, as she had him, and that I’d had years to see the strength of the affection between them before we lost her.

“So,” Zevran went on, jerking me from my thoughts, “we were all raised communally by the whores. That is all. It was a happy enough existence, ignoring the occasional beating, until eventually I was sold to the Crows. I brought a good price, so I hear.”

Another sharp, brittle smile, and those lazily hooded eyes regarded me coolly, as if waiting for my po-faced look of shock. I determined not to pander to his expectations, and wrinkled my nose.

“You seem fairly cheerful about it all,” I said dryly. “I suppose that’s something.”

Zevran’s smile widened like the unsheathing of a knife. “If could have been much worse, my dear. Shall I tell you about what happened to the other whorehouse boys who did not fetch a decent price with the Crows?”

A darker, nastier edge clung to those last words, turning the soft lilts of his accent to something full of menace. I suspected, whatever the stories Zev had, they were far worse than what I was imagining.

“Besides,” he said, pointing the toe of his freshly polished boot at me, “ _your_ life has not been so idyllic. This I know.”

A smear of polish marked the heel of his hand, and that sharp, waxen scent had got right into the back of my throat. I looked away, still smarting a little from the things that had happened in Denerim, and the cavalier way Zevran had told Wynne and the others of what I’d done, when I hadn’t even been there to defend my crimes. I still managed, somehow, to blame him for the purge, too, simply because, when he’d told me of the state of things in the city, he’d made me believe it hadn’t yet gone that far. Only when I’d stood in front of the alienage gates had I realised quite how bad things had become… and it wasn’t Zev’s fault, yet I resented him for it.

For that, and for never having been one of us in the first place.

“I think,” he said softly, that burred voice coaxing me to look at him again, only to find a hard, deep set to his features, wreathed with complexities and hidden things, “that people like you and I are not the product of happy lives of contentment.”

I scoffed. “‘People like you and I’?”

The momentary stiffening of Zevran’s expression was not lost on me, and I regretted the words at once. He flexed his shoulders into something too subtle to be a shrug; it was a simple gesture of unconcern, as if he didn’t give a damn what I thought, or how much of an idiot I was.

I cleared my throat, and stumbled awkwardly over an amelioration. “I meant, um, you know… we’re from very different places, you and I. You’ve trained your whole life to, er, to do what you do—”

_Killing people. For money._

“—and I’ve just, I don’t know, ended up here.”

Zevran smiled tightly. There seemed to be some complex set of thoughts playing out behind those amber eyes but, whatever they were, he gave me no indication. I had yet to learn, then, just how closely guarded he kept himself.

“So?” he said, lowering his voice a little more, until it was nothing but a soft curl among the shadows. “Are we so different? Buffeted by the winds of fate, brought to this point by both circumstances and excellence?”

His lips curled again on the last word, and I was left unsure of whether he was playing with me again, or venturing into self-deprecation. Either way, I decided to join in for once, instead of just letting myself be his foil.

“You may have a point….” I smirked. “About the circumstances part, anyway.”

“Oh?” Zevran snorted. “You are too kind.”

I grinned, and he set down the boot he had finished polishing, and picked up its twin, scooping his cloth through the small pot of polish that sat, open, by his foot. A glance over at the rest of the camp determined Leliana was still cooking, though I could see the others beginning to gather by the fire. Alistair had shucked off his armour, and was warming his hands over the flames. He met my eye, started to smile, and then looked away. I blinked, a little distracted, and turned my attention back to Zevran, only to find him waiting politely, a small half-smile on his face.

Not much of the firelight reached over as far as his tent—just enough to soften and colour the edges of the shadows—but it glimmered on the golden hoop in his ear, and set those amber eyes dancing. The cuts and bruises he’d picked up at the Peak seemed incongruous next to that carefully cultured appearance, and I found myself staring at the tattoo on his cheek. The Dalish were rumoured to have a practice of tattooing, weren’t they?

I shifted awkwardly, caught against the sensation of having my preconceptions painfully rearranged. Zevran’s smile widened, and there was something faintly predatory about it.

“My original point,” he said smokily, beginning to work a glob of leather polish into his second boot, “is that my mother’s Dalish nature always fascinated me. Through all the years of my Crow training, the one thing of my mother’s that I possessed was a pair of gloves. They were of Dalish make, I knew that much, and beautiful. Have you ever seen Dalish leather work?”

“No.” I shook my head. Of course I hadn’t, and he probably knew that.

My stomach started to growl quietly to itself, the smell of supper growing stronger, even over the smell of the polish and the damp earth.

“Ah, well! It is exquisite. Very fine. The softest leather, yet strong as you like, and worked with the most delicate designs. This,” Zevran added, plucking at the chest of the leathers he wore—supple as a second skin, and impractically ornate, tooled with curling lines and snippets of silver gilding—and pursing his lips, “this is Antivan, and of excellent quality, but it would look like a butcher’s apron next to Dalish work. The gloves were such, and soft as butter. I had to keep them hidden, of course, as we were not allowed such things. Eventually, they were discovered, and I never saw them again.”

He sniffed philosophically, shrugged, and focused on polishing the boot. It seemed to me the story of the gloves carried more meaning than that of his mother’s alleged fall… which I supposed made sense. It is easier to believe in the things you can touch than it is to accept the things that require hope, especially in the kinds of circumstances that choke the promise from everything.

I felt bad for mentally comparing my upbringing to Zev’s. Whatever the truth that lay behind the things he chose to tell me, it had probably been much worse than I thought. I’d been lucky, had two loving parents, a roof over my head and food on our table, most of the time. For all the deprivations, we hadn’t been the worst off in the alienage—and so what if that meant some people had thought Father put on airs? He’d worked himself raw for everything we had. Besides, for all the cramped, complicated squabbles and struggles of community back home, there were those who had suffered more than even our poorest unfortunates. There were always the ones who were outside the walls.

I hadn’t thought of it that way before, and my brow furrowed on the shapes of the thoughts as I grew a little ashamed.

“But….”

Zevran didn’t halt in his polishing, but he looked enquiringly at me. “Mmm?”

“Um, I mean… you didn’t know your mother’s people. So, you’ve never actually—?”

“No, I am no expert in the ways of the Dalish,” he said, those heavy-lidded eyes narrowing a little. “I do not _think_ of myself as Dalish… I never have. I am Antivan, and proudly so—although that did not stop me from running off to join a clan, once, when it drew near Antiva City.”

He smirked. The surprise was clearly evident on my face, perhaps combined with a brief flash of exasperation. He couldn’t simply have told me this, instead of spinning his tales of whorehouses and wonderful gloves?

No, I supposed he couldn’t. Especially when there was a captive audience to bait and tease, and he could attempt to make me squirm with references to tarts and beatings.

“What were they like?” I asked earnestly, though I doubted Zevran could have given a plain and simple answer even if I’d asked what day it was. “If there’s anything you can tell me, I’ll hear it gladly. Anything that could help us find them, or know how to… I don’t know, approach them?”

He spat onto the supple leather of his boot, and buffed it vigorously with the cloth again, all the while eyeing me with quiet amusement. I didn’t think I’d ever met someone who was so much of an enigma. From moment to moment, Zevran unseated me; I never knew whether I should feel sorry for his trials, be wary of his skills, or even believe a word that passed his lips.

Eventually, I would learn there was a balance to be struck between all three things, but the mystery had manifold layers.

He tilted his head, as if considering the shine he’d raised on the boots. “Eh, you are right to be cautious. They are often distrustful of outsiders, and unwilling to come into contact with them. If they _are_ to be found in this forest, make no mistake, it will be the Dalish who allow you to find them.”

I nodded slowly. I’d suspected as much. “We know they’re there, though. You saw that arrowhead Wynne found?”

“Mmm.” Evidently satisfied with the boots, Zevran wiped his hands and folded up his polishing cloth, and began to pull on his socks. They were, as I could have predicted, smoother and finer than mine, and didn’t have half as many dubious stains on them. “But I would not—how shall I say this?—entertain too many hopes of a warm and enveloping reception.”

The voice of experience was in those words. I frowned. “The clan you tried to join, then… they weren’t welcoming?”

He laughed softly—for once, not a scoff or a disparaging snort. “Hah… to a skinny little whoreson brat? No, it is safe to say the reality did not live up at all to the fantasies I had constructed as a boy, staring at those gloves.”

I watched him pull the socks on over elegantly pointed toes, dark, soft wool rolling up over smooth, tanned skin. All I knew of the Dalish, discounting fourth-hand rumours and the stories I’d heard as I child, came from Brother Genitivi’s writings which, as I had already learned, were not the reliable and unbiased account of the world I’d once believed them to be. I had so many questions but, as I opened my mouth, Zevran sighed and began to slide his boots on.

“Still, such is life, yes? Come… enough talk of the Dalish. I wish to get some supper in my belly before Alistair eats everything.”

Zevran rose unceremoniously, and left me sitting there with words half-bundled on my tongue, frowning into the shadows. I puffed out my lips and, supposing I’d hit a nerve that lay close to the surface of that suave, sophisticated veneer, I scrambled to my feet and followed him.

He had a point: we didn’t even know if we would find the Dalish, much less make enough of an impression to convince them to honour the Grey Wardens’ treaty. For all the faith we were placing in those mouldy old documents, I wasn’t entirely sure the wild elves would see them the same way.

Still, we had to try.

__  
**~o~O~o~**   


Dinner was a surprisingly convivial affair. I put it down to having Soldier’s Peak behind us, because pretty much anything would seem a lightened load after centuries-old decay and the stink of demons. Possibly, it was as much due to the night clearing, and the warmth of our fire against the cold, dry, crisp sky, pierced by a thousand tiny, brilliant stars.

We talked a little of the Dalish, though I didn’t mention what Zevran had said about his mother, and neither did he. Mostly, all the knowledge we had pooled together at the end of it was those second-hand scraps of stories and rumours, and we were no further along than we had been before. Still, I supposed it was comforting to know we were all sharing in our ignorance.

Wynne bade us all goodnight almost immediately after she’d finished eating, and I hadn’t realised until then how tired she looked. She brushed off Alistair’s frown of concern, simply smiling and saying, with all this walking, she was aware she wasn’t as young as she used to be. Sten retreated to his own tent not long after, and Morrigan went to hers with her customary arch rejection of our company. Maethor lifted his head from his paws and whined a bit when she went, which drew an eye roll and a sneer from her. The hound wagged his stumpy tail as she padded out of the circle of firelight, and I gazed down at him fondly, rather suspecting the show of affection was to do with the witch having given him an entire rabbit to eat. Naturally, that hadn’t stopped him woofing down half a bowl of Leliana’s cooking as well, though I had to admit it was good.

For all those jokes of Alistair’s about Grey Wardens’ bottomless stomachs—and the running joke among the group about _his_ ability to pack away food—life on the road certainly did make for a healthy appetite, and that made rationing what we had painful. No one complained all that much, though I imagined it was worse for those of the others who’d never been used to going without.

Somewhere in the undergrowth, something rustled. Maethor, slumped over my feet like a warm, short-coated but rather smelly hearthrug, raised his head and scented the air, ears pricked. Alistair glanced over his shoulder as the hound’s wrinkled snout quivered, and the fleeting similarity of their actions made me want to smile.

“Fox,” he announced, relaxing again.

As if in answer, the rustling intensified as the animal scurried away, and the high-pitched yelp of its call echoed through the tree line. Maethor grumbled low in his chest, but apparently couldn’t be bothered to move. I reached down and scratched his thick, bullish neck.

“As long as it’s not wolves,” I said, glancing at the dark shapes of the trees, and trying not to think of how easy it would be to imagine branches as arms, or claws. “There’ll be wolves in the forest, won’t there?”

Alistair shrugged. “Maybe, but they’d be very unlikely to come anywhere near us. They usually go for lone travellers, if they attack hu— _people_ at all.”

The fire was burning low now, and it ruddied his face, splashing the gold back into his hair, and catching at the light in his eyes. I smiled, quietly grateful for that small correction. He held my gaze for a moment, then looked away, and I wished fervently that we could have had some opportunity to be alone. Camp wasn’t exactly conducive to privacy… not that I knew what I wanted to say to him, in any case.

Leliana stretched her arms above her head, making a luxuriant little noise partway between a sigh and a yawn. “Mmm… it is definitely getting colder. We’ll have to see about finding some thicker blankets next time we run across a merchant. Maybe a few furs?”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Zevran said consideringly. “You know these Fereldans, yes? Turn your back for a moment, and they’ll stick a pelt and a carving of a war hound on practically anything.”

He smiled lazily, and she giggled.

“Hey!” Alistair frowned, affecting wounded national pride. “Leave my country alone, you… foreigners, you.”

I grinned. “Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with carvings of dogs, is there, boy?”

Maethor rolled over, wagged his tail sleepily, and let that great, thick tongue loll out of the side of his mouth. A waft of doggy breath, like stale, stagnant duckweed, panted up to meet me, and I patted the hairy expanse of his belly.

“Charming,” Zevran said dryly.

Leliana rubbed the back of her neck thoughtfully. “Maybe the Dalish will be willing to trade… if we find them.”

Overhead, a cloud passed across the sky, a dark, ruffled blot against the star-pricked blackness. The moon was waning again. I wasn’t sure how many cycles I’d watched it go through since this all began, but tonight it was the shape of a shaved penny, and bright against the darkness, like a silver piece.

“Perhaps,” Zevran agreed, and I almost thought I imagined the tone of melancholy in his voice. He fixed Leliana with one of his best smirks, though, and all of a sudden that hint of dejection was gone. “Of course, in the meantime, my dear, if it is the warming of your bedroll that you require—”

She groaned. “Oh, for pity’s sake….”

“What? I am merely being a gentleman, no? Offering my services to a beautiful woman in need?”

She rolled her eyes. “No. And no. Thank you.”

“Are you certain? You could beguile me with your fascinating melodies, no? And, should you wish, I could… tune your lute? Perhaps pluck a few notes from your quivering—”

“Ah!” Leliana grimaced. “Can’t someone make him _stop_?”

Zevran just laughed throatily and, with a look of self-satisfied smugness, rose from his seat by the smouldering fire.

“At your slightest command, _principessa_. I shall bid you all goodnight. We start early in the morning, I fear, yes?”

I nodded. “Seems like a plan. Goodnight, Zevran.”

“ _Sogni d’oro, coraggiosa_.” He inclined his head to Alistair. “And you, my friend.”

“Goodnight,” Alistair said, and the three of us sat in silence as Zev padded off to his tent.

No one spoke for a moment. I knew I really ought to get to bed myself… not that sleep was much of a friend of mine. The dreams didn’t come every night, but they were happening more often, and I didn’t relish the prospect of the things they brought with them.

All the same, I didn’t move. I just sat there, feeling rather awkward, and yet very stubborn, and staring into the yellow-orange dance of the flames.

“Well,” Leliana said eventually, “I must have my rest too. I won’t be at all sorry to get some sleep tonight.”

“No, it’s… er, it’s getting late,” Alistair agreed, clearing his throat and looking mildly embarrassed. “Um. Goodnight.”

“’Night, Leliana,” I echoed as she rose, smiling.

“Goodnight, then,” she said, and she retired, humming quietly to herself as she went.

Alistair and I looked at each other over the fire for a moment, a nearly palpable sense of clumsy expectation washing up around us, and then we both grinned. At my feet, Maethor rolled over, all four legs spread-eagled and sprawled at the air, and his ears flopping inside out as he tried to warm his belly even further.

“So, uh… you and Zevran seemed to have a lot to talk about earlier,” Alistair said quietly, fixing me with an expectant look.

I shook my head. “He knows more about the Dalish than me. Apparently, he has Dalish blood… although I don’t know if that’ll help us.”

I was still reaching down, fingers absently scritching Maethor’s coat. Most of the day’s mud had dried and flaked off him, but the hound could still have done with a bath. He stank like a shem’s armpits when he got warm… not that I supposed I should let myself think that phrase anymore.

“Oh.”

Alistair nodded slowly, and I glanced inquisitively at him, not sure whether he was curious, jealous, or just as confused as I was when it came to how the boundaries might or might not have shifted between us.

We should talk, I supposed. I wanted to, but the silence was so heavy it seemed to buzz, and it burned at my ears. Anyway, what was there I could say? We could hardly exchange starry-eyed sentiments of tender longing without acknowledging the whole ‘alone against the Blight, death awaiting us at every turn’ thing and, next to that, this felt incongruous and uncomfortable.

Alistair was fiddling with the worry token he wore on his left forefinger, his thumb rubbing repetitively at the ring’s golden surface. It glimmered in the dying firelight, and he frowned as he looked down at it.

“Well, um… I, er, guess I should….” He trailed off, glanced towards his tent and, with a short, awkward cough, started to get to his feet.

Maethor readied to sit up, liquid brown eyes watching him intently, but then gave a little canine groan and flopped back to the scrape he’d made himself.

“Wait.”

I scratched at the back of my right wrist with my other hand, not really sure what to say, except that I had to say _something_. Alistair stilled and looked down at me, his eyes dark in the flame-licked gloom. Everything was shadows and coldness, except where the firelight touched him. I didn’t quite manage to meet his gaze as I rose to my feet and—my movements quick, agile and decisive in a way I certainly didn’t feel—took hold of his wrist and drew him aside, away from the blind eyes of the other tents, and into the quiet embrace of the trees.

“What? What— oh?” Confusion flickered briefly across his face, and the cold air smelled like rain-fresh earth and pine sap. “Oh-hh! I _see_ ….”

His eyes shone with smug delight as I raised myself up on my toes to kiss him; far more forward than I’d ever been before, or than I could ever have imagined I’d be. I crossed my wrists behind his head, pulled myself close… and felt his arms folding around me. It was easy to press closer still—easier than it had any right to be—and so very easy to feel the warmth and solidity of his body against mine.

He was grinning when we parted, looking flushed and a little surprised. I doubted I looked much different.

I bit my lip ruefully. “Sorry.”

Alistair shook his head emphatically. “Don’t be. Really, actually… really, don’t.”

“I, uh, wanted you to know I meant what I said,” I murmured, my arms still wrapped around his neck, his breath still warming the air between us.

“Mm.” He smiled. “Me too. I’m glad you didn’t, um… reconsider. I didn’t think you would, but I know this isn’t exactly ideal.”

“Nothing ever is,” I said softly. “But it’s close enough.”

Alistair’s smile widened, those hazel eyes filling with an even deeper warmth as he held me closer. He was lovely, even if he did smell of human sweat, and mud and grease, and worn leather and metal. My fingers trailed through the back of his hair, following a tentative path around the side of his head, and finally grazing the outer rim of his ear. It felt very peculiar. Thick, and soft, and… well, round. It was like something stunted, or deformed—some kind of afterthought slapped onto a lazy sculptor’s efforts. I could feel the weight of his hand on the back of my waist, even through my leathers, and it felt strange to wish I could feel his touch on my skin. It should have shamed me… but it didn’t. At least, not much.

“Thing is, I don’t know what we do about this,” I confessed, the words barely a whisper scraping the dark.

Alistair flexed one shoulder uncertainly, and shook his head again. “Neither do I. It’s not how I thought— I mean, I didn’t _think_ ….” He sighed shortly, and brushed the hair out of my eyes with gentle fingers. “I guess, right now, we just take the days as they come, right?”

We could hardly do much else, though I didn’t like to say so. Instead, I nodded, highly aware of those callused fingertips trailing down my cheek, and coming to rest at the point of my jaw.

“Mm-hm,” I murmured, not really trusting myself with whole words.

Next to the Blight, and the realities of life as it stood at that moment, everything else seemed a pale shadow. It was, I tried to tell myself, ridiculous to feel this way, insane to want this. And yet, if we could all be dead on the end of darkspawn spears, or shot through with Dalish arrows, or hacked to death by Loghain’s soldiers before we even had a chance to be roasted alive by the archdemon… well, at least we’d each known that someone had cared.

At least, for a little time, we’d both been more than just a vessel of duty.

Alistair smiled softly, and tilted my chin. I closed my eyes and let him kiss me again, my fingers curling away from the unfamiliar roundness of his ear and resting, half-clenched, on the side of his neck.

He held me tightly and, when he pulled away, pressed one last, chaste kiss to my forehead and wished me goodnight, the sound of my name on his lips made me smile. He went to his tent, and I went to mine and, though it felt cold and empty in my bedroll, the dark spaces that waited to be filled with dreams were not as menacing as they usually seemed.


	2. Chapter 2

That night, for the first time, I dreamed of something that wasn’t walls of red rock, teeming with the thrashing bodies of darkspawn, and yet had the unmistakeable touch of their filth about it. 

I was at Soldier’s Peak, and the snow that blanketed the bare stone told me we were in the brittle grip of winter. I stood alone on the rampart, looking down over the narrow cut through the hills, and it was so cold that my ears stung, and my breath hung like ice on the air. Above me, the sky looked black, boiling with thick, greasy cloud, and everything smelled like bad eggs and offal. 

I looked around, searching for some sign of life, but everything was still … deathly still. Grief ran through me like hot sand, though I couldn’t have said why. There must have been a battle, or a number of battles, yet I didn’t remember them; I knew nothing but a tide of loss and regret and guilt and — when I turned again — the empty fortress seemed filled with bones. I could smell blood, hear screams … and then there was silence. Everything seemed stifled, blurred . 

A sound crept into the stillness then: a low, harsh grating, like metal scraping slowly against stone. It grew louder and more insistent as, behind me, the statue of Warden-Commander Asturian began to move, lurching jerkily from its pedestal. I spun around, wide-eyed with horror at the thing unfolding like some kind of stone crab, a man and yet not a man, but a creature jaded with the moss and scales of years and now, somehow, changing before me. The great plates of the Warden-Commander armour, emblazoned with the rampant white griffon—the same armour I’d seen in countless portraits lining the Great Hall, and the same armour the rotted body of Sophia Dryden had still been encased in when the demon that had fed upon her tried to turn me—bloomed from pale, lichen-rimed stone to deep, metallic blue as Asturian straightened up. His hands had rested upon a sword almost as long as he was tall, and he grasped it in gauntleted hands, as if bracing himself against its strength, weary and unsteady after so long a sleep. 

Colour crawled into the stone figure’s cheeks, and the face framed by that heavy helmet now seemed hewn from flesh instead of rock… except for the eyes. I flinched, crying out in alarm as that pale, sightless gaze turned on me; a gaze that was still solid stone. Asturian moved towards me , and I made to run but couldn’t, trapped by what I now saw—as I looked down in terror at my body—was heavy plate armour so unlike my leathers it didn’t seem possible I could ever have got into it. Great winged pauldrons of steel curled from my shoulders, my chest and legs bound in overlapping plates of bright silver. I flexed my fingers, staring down at my hands to find them encased in strange, silver gauntlets, their movements clumsy and numb, as if someone else was controlling them. 

So complete was my confusion, so enveloping the sense of fear and unease, that I almost forgot the apparition bearing down on me. I supposed it must be a demon, and began to wonder if more had escaped our cleansing of the Peak. 

Asturian lifted his blade. I reached for the daggers I wore at my hips, but they weren’t they, and the sword slung across my back was not the light, simple blade I knew. Suddenly, a heavy, dull greatsword was in my grip, and though it was far lighter than it looked, it was too big for me, and I could barely lift the thing, much less swing it with much precision. 

The old Commander did not attack me, however. He merely levied his blade at my head, then shifted it to the side and pointed with the softly shimmering metal, sightless eyes fixed on the dark sky behind me. My boots crunched on the snow as I turned, squinting out across the hills, and cold air lanced my lungs like a knife. 

At that moment, a shrieking roar rent the air. It was beyond loud; a sound like a physical presence that throbbed and gnawed at the ears. It seemed to hum through everything, vile and violent, like a glass blade of hatred. 

I saw the outline of a huge, red dragon swooping through the clouds. Fire belched from its mouth, and ash blackened the sky yet further, until it was falling like dark rain, choking and blinding me. It was on everything, _in_ everything, and I felt it start to swallow me whole, a seething mantel of slow death as, all the while, the dragon’s screams shook apart the very walls upon which I stood. 

I awoke in a panic, with those noises echoing in my head, and my body half-convinced it was still trapped in a suit of plate armour.

The undershirt I slept in—lived in, practically, as Maker knew we didn’t get many opportunities to wash or change our clothes—was stuck to my skin but, as I freed my legs from my blankets and inspected them, wriggling my toes to prove I still had feet, I was relieved to see my usual soft breeches, and no semblance of metal. 

Beside me, a great, warm, slobbery lump of mabari hound stirred, and whined quizzically. Maethor had snuck into my tent after the fire lost its warmth, and I was, as usual, grateful for his company. I rolled over, buried my face in the hound’s stale fur, and breathed heavily until the panic passed. 

I wasn’t sure if that had been a Grey Warden dream, or just good old-fashioned fear. Either way, it took me a long while to get back to sleep. 

_**~o~O~o~** _

We did indeed start early in the morning. By dawn, we were already moving and, as the sun washed through the grey-stained sky, sluicing thin, watery light over the trees and the ever-present mud, rain began to spot my shoulders.

The group was rather subdued, but then I doubted any of them were eager to head back towards the Brecilian Forest. In truth, I wouldn’t have been surprised if at least one of them had refused, or mounted a more persistent argument in favour of ignoring the Dalish and heading back towards Lake Calenhad. 

No one did, though. Of all of them—excepting Maethor, who was blessed with that permanent canine cheerfulness—Zevran seemed happiest. That struck me as odd, considering he’d been the one injured last time, yet I supposed, for him, that probably meant the worst had happened. In any case, he’d know what to watch for… and he _did_ have more experience of the Dalish than any of us. Perhaps, I thought, he was looking forward to the possibility of finding them, maybe even reconnecting with something of the mother he’d never known. 

Morrigan, too, seemed more relaxed as the trees that cloaked the hillsides grew thicker. It was her natural habit, of course; dangerous, unpredictable wildland, where she could stride out with that black iron staff of hers beating savage strikes on the ground, and know that she was probably the scariest thing in the forest. I hid a smile at that thought, but I rather hoped she _was_ … if only for our sakes. 

Leliana was comparatively quiet, those sharp eyes of hers always on the move, peering into the shadowed recesses between the trees, or looking back down the slopes we covered, as if plotting some kind of map behind her eyes. 

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” she said, after a while. “Only a little more than two decades ago, King Maric’s rebel forces were swarming over these very hills. Do you think they came this way?”

“Don’t know,” Alistair said shortly, with that rather pained expression he always seemed to get when anyone mentioned Maric.

He looked haggard this morning; I assumed his dreams had been worse than mine, though I wondered if they were the same. I decided to ask him about it when I had the chance, though I wasn’t quite sure how to put it to words. 

“We could be walking in his very footsteps,” Leliana mused, gazing contemplatively at the trees. 

Alistair grunted. At the far left of the group, striding out a little way apart from the rest of us, Morrigan chuckled dryly. 

“Really, if it enthrals you so, why not write a song of it? Play with your pretty stories of kings and battles, if you will. You have taken up the instruments of a bard again, have you not?”

Leliana blinked, and shot the witch a small frown. “It is a very small lute, that is all. I had thought to pick out a few songs in the evenings, and—”

“Oh, wonderful! Yes, I’m sure we can hardly wait.” Disdain positively oozed from Morrigan’s words. “Why not begin by composing a suitable ballad to commemorate the events at Redcliffe?”

I said nothing. It was curious to see how easily Morrigan fell back on this old, arch spite of hers… and I wondered if she perhaps wasn’t as comfortable here as her long, springing stride made her look. 

Leliana grimaced. “Redcliffe? But what happened there was horrible! Why would I want to speak of that?”

A handful of birds chattered and flapped in the trees, causing Maethor to break off into the undergrowth in search of the feathery interlopers. He scuffled and woofed about, then came out again with a piece of bracken draped rakishly over one ear, jaws wide and tail wagging. 

Morrigan smiled, and it was like a sharp, white knife. “Why? Surely, a bard takes events of great import and puts them to tale. ’Tis not so?”

Leliana shook her head vehemently. “No! I mean… not like that. So many people died, and they were violated by unimaginable evil forces.” 

“There, now.” The witch smirked. “That was not so difficult, was it? You may wish to add some music, of course.”

“Morrigan! That is vile.” Leliana pouted, looking truly hurt, as if the memories were raw and bloody wounds. “You… you make it sound as if you _enjoyed_ what happened there. I can barely stomach to think of it.”

She had a point. I took a deep breath, focusing on the smell of damp earth and pine trees, instead of remembering walking corpses, and the stink of death and burning oil. To my right, Zevran was watching the two women with polite interest, and Wynne was paying attention, too. Of course, neither of them had seen the devastation in Redcliffe village first-hand, or the things we’d had to fight through to get to the castle… although the story had been passed on, at least in pieces. 

Morrigan shrugged. “But we were successful in the end, as you recall. Victory without cost has little worth.”

“How can you say that?” Leliana shuddered, the light rain frizzing her brightly burnished hair. “When I think of what that poor little boy went through… no. No, to glorify what happened there would be wrong.” 

Morrigan snorted. “Hmph. And then who will learn from those events? I would think on it some more, were I you.”

Alistair sighed tautly, and it was the sound of patience wearing thin. “I don’t think anyone needs to _learn_ from Redcliffe. At least not until Arl Eamon’s well. The sooner it can all be forgotten, the better.” 

A tale hung there, I thought. Had he ever truly been a templar, I might have expected Alistair to take the view that—unwitting child or not—Connor’s releasing the demon was an example of why the Circle needed to take children like him into its care. The fact that Lady Isolde had tried to hide her son’s powers in the effort to protect him was testament to the fear and stigma associated with mages and perhaps, if the rules were not so arbitrarily enforced, there would have been fewer of them willing to turn to forbidden magic in order to snatch their chances at freedom, or change. We’d seen that in the Tower although, as Wynne had said at the time, there were some means that could never justify the end. 

And yet, Alistair didn’t seem for a moment to sway towards that debate. His sole concern, I thought, was for Eamon… and probably covering up any complicity he might have had in Isolde’s deceit. 

To think that his loyalty was so unwavering was a little worrying although, of course, I knew it already. Once he chose to bestow it, Alistair’s allegiance was unshakeable, and that was a thought that, in its own small way, gave me just as much comfort as it did concern. 

We traipsed on in silence for a while and, of all of us, I noticed that Sten seemed the least relaxed. In truth, he looked even more wary of the trees than me, and I supposed there were probably two reasons for that. Firstly, he had the deepest distrust of magic I’d ever known, more so even than the old folk back in the alienage who used to spit at the mention of the word, and make hasty holy signs on their fingers. I remembered the things Sten had said in the tavern at Redcliffe , and how he’d seemed to take the demons of Soldier’s Peak almost as a personal insult. Possessed trees, I decided, most likely sat ill with him. 

Also, this was deeply Fereldan land. I might have grown up behind walls, and under skies crowded with towers, gables, and washing lines, but I still knew that the trees, the mud—the whole cold, vaguely desolate stubbornness of this place—was very much in keeping with our national character. We were, after all, the plucky little plain-speaking country whose plucky, plain-speaking inhabitants had thrown off the gilded yoke of Orlesian rule, when we should have been no more than a backwater province of the Empire. We were at our best when the challenges were greatest, and we had the favour of Fate on our side, even when things seemed grim. 

Well, it was a good thing to believe about one’s country, wasn’t it? And it made being born elven—elven _and_ Fereldan—seem less of a burden, because ours was a nation that hoarded misfortunes and disadvantages like coins. 

Still, I decided it must all be very different to Sten’s homeland. 

I slowed my pace a bit and dropped to the back of the group, drawing level with the massive, silent figure. Sten reminded me of an oxcart sometimes—inasmuch as one person, even as big as he, could do. It was something to do with the way he trudged along, carrying his pack and several of the other party essentials, including the heavy cooking pot, barely ever tiring and hardly saying a word. When it was very quiet, and there weren’t even birds calling overhead, his low, even breathing was almost like the steady rumble of a set of axles. 

I peered up at him, waiting for the moment those brilliant eyes acknowledged me before I spoke. He glanced down at me and grunted quietly, much as one might observe the mild annoyance of a fly in the room. 

“You wish something of me?”

“I was just thinking how different this must be to where you’re from,” I said with a shrug, nodding at the muddy, rutted ground under our feet, and the thick waves of trees shrouding the hillsides. 

We would make the pass in another hour or so, most likely, and I was beginning to entertain fond notions of having a cosy woodland camp set up before dark, even though all experience and practicality warned me it wouldn’t happen. 

Sten let out a short, eloquently weary breath. 

“I mean,” I continued doggedly, refusing to take the hint, “I expect you find Ferelden very strange. I… I was thinking about what you said; about how we’re always trying to change our place in life? The qunari think very differently, don’t they?”

He eyed me critically. “We know our roles. They are set for us, written in the Qun. All those who follow the Qun have a place under it. _Asit tal-eb._ ” 

I frowned. “Which means—?”

“‘They way things are meant to be’,” he said, and I could have sworn there was a note of terrible, aching melancholy in his voice. 

It vanished quickly, buried in the low, calm implacability of his words, but I caught onto the thread of it, my curiosity roused. 

“You sound a bit homesick, Sten,” I offered, on the basis that he might either tell me a little more of his people, or possibly strike me dead where I stood. 

Instead, the qunari simply took a long breath and, lifting his broad head to the tree-fringed sky, let the light rain spatter against his face. 

“Perhaps.” 

I stared. I hadn’t really expected that admission. He glanced at me, his eyes like banked coals against the weather-beaten bronze of his face. The thin lines of scars I had not noticed before criss-crossed his skin—one on his right cheek, one on his chin—and though they were but hair-thin lines, I wondered in what battles he’d come by them. 

Sten frowned briefly, and turned his attention back to the muddy ground ahead. “It is strange to be in a crowd and hear a language that is not your own. To see faces that are and aren’t like yours. I… miss the smells of Seheron. Tea and incense, and the sea. Ferelden smells of wet dogs,” he added, with an accusatory look at Maethor, who had his front paws up on the bark of a nearby fir tree, and had apparently just been offended by a squirrel. 

I smiled. “Ah, that. Yes. Still… wet dog isn’t so bad, is it?”

Sten sniffed pointedly. “They say skunks do not mind the smell of other skunks, either.”

If that was what he called a sense of humour, it was dry to the point of arid. However, it didn’t get to me the way that ‘excelling at poverty’ crack of his had, and I just grinned, brazening out the slight. 

“Few more weeks of it really getting into the back of your throat, you’ll not even realise there _is_ a smell,” I said cheerfully. 

Sten gave a small, jaded ‘hmm’, but said nothing else, and I supposed I should stop pushing my luck. 

We headed on, and everything was quiet, but for the dull, damp thuds of our feet, and the small sounds of our pack and bedrolls creaking at their straps. We were nearing the mouth of the pass, leaving the Southrons behind and heading into what the map marked as forest, though there seemed no such clear-cut difference around me. 

Overhead, the trees seemed to be growing closer together, linking their fingers in some dark, numinous pact. The bare, black bones of those that had shed their leaves, and the thick, deep greens of those that held their needles all seemed to meld, making the air heavy with the smell of earth and growth, even through the drowsy cold of their winter sleep. 

_**~o~O~o~** _

Given everything that had happened when the others had first ventured into the forest, I felt our actual entrance into the pass should have been marked with a little more dramatic flair. There was no great fanfare, however, and nothing truly unusual; we just quietly left the last traces of paths behind us, and the trees rose up all around, no longer flanked or constrained by the gritty banks of hillsides. 

The rain had petered out, at least for a while, and the ground was growing soft with pine needles, and the mulch of old leaves and brush. The light began to turn dappled, a green-filtered, soft hue to it, and although it was all very pretty—in a faintly foreboding kind of way—I wasn’t entirely sure we hadn’t been lured into a waiting trap, as if some lock might suddenly snap closed behind us. 

“All right,” Alistair said, drawing to a halt near a particularly large fir tree. “Which way from here?”

Zevran nodded to the right hand side of what—had there been any real space between the drifts of pine needles, rotted leaves, tree roots and assorted bits of undergrowth—might have been the path. 

“This is the route we took last time. I do not know how much of it you care to repeat.”

One tree stood out among the others: a gnarled oak, a bit like our vhenadahl, back in the alienage, only smaller and more crumpled by the years, instead of growing tall and strong, without competition. 

Wynne paced a little way towards its wizened boughs, and I tensed, as if the thing might suddenly spring into life and snatch her up. It didn’t, and she paused by its trunk, leaning one hand against the rough bark.

“Look, here.” She stooped stiffly, picking something out the earth at her feet. “I thought I saw something….”

She straightened and held out her palm, showing a small arrowhead resting there. It was like the other she’d found; the thing that had convinced me we needed to at least try to find the Dalish. It was their make, certainly: a beautiful thing, of carefully knapped and polished flint, fine as glass and sharp as wire. 

Morrigan sniffed archly. “Those things are all over the forest, old woman,” she said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. 

I moved over to Wynne, peering in fascination at that tiny, deadly thing, its smooth surface like an ocean-ground stone, the colour of storm clouds. 

I bit my lip, and nodded in the direction Zevran had indicated. “We go this way… but carefully.” 

Nobody argued and, full of that new, eager sense of power, I strode off into the thicket, not even waiting for the others to follow. Maethor trotted unquestioningly after me, and I didn’t bother to look back. 

_**~o~O~o~** _

I’d thought the forest would be a consistent creature. I had never really been in one before but, as far as I was aware, there were trees, and more trees, and maybe the occasional babbling brook or mossy clearing… the kind of places the heroes of my childhood story books might have rested before they battled dragons or rescued princesses. 

Naturally, I was wrong. 

It proved very difficult to maintain any sense of direction within the forest. I knew that, to the north, lay Dragon’s Peak, and Denerim, and that there were many, many acres of woodland between that and the passes south, which the map said led to Gwaren and—to the west—the Korcari Wilds. 

Either of those destinations would have meant several weeks’ travel through the unforgiving, tangled terrain but, as we had no wish to accidentally stumble either into Loghain’s own lands, or a wilderness that was probably filled with darkspawn by now, the distance was a heartening factor. Still, within the first few hours, what few bearings I’d had were pretty much lost completely. 

I didn’t dare say anything, though I think Morrigan knew. I just kept going the way we’d started, but she picked up her pace, striding out ahead and to the left of me. It was as if she was just making her own way, as she was wont to do, but it made it easy enough to follow her, and by her example, to pick the less tortuous routes through the undergrowth. 

We didn’t see any strange or demonic things. No possessed trees, no wolves… and definitely no signs of the Dalish. 

After a while—time being just as hard as distance to determine in the forest, where there was no clear, uninterrupted glimpse of the sun—we passed the place where Zevran had been injured. Or, at least, he thought we did. Morrigan argued that we were heading further east than that particular spot, and Wynne was growing tight-lipped and looking tired. 

I waded in before the burgeoning disagreement got any more heated, and suggested we find somewhere to rest for a little while, seeing as there seemed to be no imminent danger. 

“Just a little while,” I wheedled, inserting myself between the witch and the assassin—never a good middle ground to find oneself upon. “Then we’ll push on, look for some sign of the Dalish, maybe near water? They must need fresh water.”

As did we. It stood to reason there were almost certainly a few streams running through the forest’s northerly edges; we weren’t all that far from the Drakon, though reaching it would have meant journeying farther out of our way than we’d planned. 

“Fine. Have it your way.” Morrigan relented with evident reluctantly, throwing her hands into the air with a gesture of frustrated finality. 

Far more gracefully, Zevran inclined his head. “As you wish.”

Unfortunately, that left me taking point, picking an uneasy path through the trees—and with Morrigan no longer of a mind to offer me surreptitious aid. I felt sure I’d seen the same tree root three times before we happened upon a small clearing that looked like a safe spot to rest. 

Nothing in the forest was truly empty, but that small round of space lay like a tomb, thickly carpeted with the flaky, soft mulch that shrouded our steps, and dominated by the fallen corpse of a mighty tree, now rotted and worn to a pocked, bleached skeleton. The thick, green shoots of eager saplings sprung up nearby as other, more ancient trees looked on, as if silently mourning or contemplating their felled brother… or perhaps smirking amongst themselves, like successful conspirators. 

It was hard to tell, but easy to realise that the forest was getting to me. I saw mysticism in everything, intimidated by the unfamiliar alchemy of plants and the low, vibrant thrum of life that filled the silence, and yet masqueraded behind its veneer. Oh, yes, it was quiet in the forest—right up until you really _listened_ . Then, everything had a voice. The creak and crack of trees growing, dying, the whisper of the still, stifled air and the scurries of small, soft creatures… it all wove together, oppressive in its beautiful illusion of quietness, and it made me long for the loud, gaudy simplicity of a city. 

As had become routine during our time on the road, we took turns answering the call of nature in the most private few stands of bushes available—not entirely as awkward now as it had once been, but still not the highlight of the day—then dumped our gear and sank to a grateful rest, albeit a brief one. Wynne, still looking drawn and tired, sat primly on one torn-up root of the fallen tree, as if it was a bench placed there just for her use. Alistair perched solicitously nearby, watching her with badly shielded concern, while Zevran clambered up agilely onto the tree’s split, peeling trunk. There, he settled himself with an appreciative sigh, face tipped back to catch the shafts of sunlight that were stronger here than they had been all day. With his ornate Antivan leathers, that tattoo on his cheek, and the pale flax of his hair against his skin’s dark tan, he seemed as foreign as ever to me, and I couldn’t help thinking of the story he’d told me of his Dalish mother. 

Maybe there was a wildness that ran in the blood, as silent as the forest seemed, until its call was heard. 

Personally, I didn’t quite trust the amount of beetles, woodlice, and small burrowing things that made their home in dead trees, so I sat on my pack, eyeing the leaf litter with faint suspicion every time something appeared to scuttle within it. Nature was all very well, but I was used to associating insect activity with things like cockroaches, maggots, rot beetle, termites, and any of the other host of pests that infested the alienage houses. The thought of them all being at large out here—quite apart from the possibility of wolves, demons, Dalish, and maybe even darkspawn—was mildly unnerving. 

Still, even Sten seemed glad of the rest. He hunkered down near one of those tall, straight trees, with his arms propped across his knees, and stared into the middle distance. He looked as if he was deep in mediation, just like he did when he’d sit by his tent of an evening. I often wondered what he was thinking about at those times, but asking seemed impolite. 

“We’ve probably got a good bit of daylight left,” Alistair said speculatively, squinting up at the canopy, and the ragged hole in it the fallen tree he was sitting on had made. “Ooh, look. Clouds. D’you think it’s going to rain again?”

“Hardly matters,” Morrigan said darkly, from the position she’d adopted at the edge of the clearing, her back against a tree, arms folded across her pale, jewel-draped bosom. She seemed distracted, glancing off into the trees from time to time, as if she could hear something the rest of us could not. “We should find shelter well before sundown. There are things in this place one does not wish to stumble upon in the dark.”

He smirked. “‘One’ meaning you, I suppose? Hah… scared, are we?”

Those golden eyes narrowed as she glared at him, her lip slightly curled. “ _I_ am merely advising caution for fools such as _you_ . ’Twould please me far more to leave you to your own stupid devices, but make no mistake: I do not fear this place. ’Tis a home from home… although without Mother in it.” The venom dropped from her voice suddenly, and she appeared to consider this, then gave a brief, brittle smile. “Which, when considered so, makes it seem _far_ more hospitable.” 

Alistair wrinkled his nose. “Maker save us, now she’s making jokes….”

“It is the influence of your biting wit and jovial good spirits, Alistair,” Zevran said lazily, from his cat-like sprawl at the top of the trunk. His eyes were closed, and a faint smile wreathed his lips, though he still seemed aware of the face that Alistair pulled in response. “Oh, now… it was merely a suggestion.”

It was nice to stop, even if it was just for a little while. The chance to give my aching muscles a few moments’ recuperation was invaluable although, as soon as I’d stopped walking, the dull ache of exertion did begin to give way to actual pain. My tongue felt dry and thick, too, so I allowed myself a sip of the water we were now closely rationing, and let the thin beams of sunlight skim my skin. 

A little way off, Leliana knelt at the edge of the clearing, and appeared to be rummaging around in the undergrowth. I frowned, curious as to what she was doing. I thought maybe she’d found another arrowhead, or some other sign of the Dalish passing this way, and I was perplexed when she came up with a handful of small white flowers. 

“Oh, I had so hoped I would find some of these!” she exclaimed brightly, clasping them to her nose and sniffing deeply. 

“I hope they do not give you a rash,” Morrigan said, in an acerbic tone that rather suggested otherwise. 

“I know those,” Alistair chipped in. “Andraste’s Grace, aren’t they?” 

“Yes.” Leliana nodded as she got to her feet, stowing some of the flowers in her belt pouch and—I was not the least bit surprised to see—delicately tucking one tiny bloom into her hair. “My mother used to keep them, dried, in her closet, amongst her clothes. They always smelled so pretty… as did she.”

Her broad smile faltered then, grew sad, and diminished. Wynne cleared her throat. 

“Well, this has been a welcome rest, but I think we should move on if we mean to make the most of the light.”

Alistair looked at her in concern, brow furrowed. “Are you sure you’re all right? We can rest longer if—”

“I’m fine,” she said curtly. “And I shall be all the better when we move on.”

He didn’t look convinced—and I didn’t miss the glance he shot at me, as if he wanted me to back him up—but she made a valid case. The days were growing ever shorter, and we’d lose the light even quicker in the forest.

“All right,” I said, getting slowly to my feet and shouldering my pack… and trying to ignore the throbbing protests of my muscles. “Let’s get going. This way, yes?” I pointed to the opposite side of the clearing we’d come in from. “This is east?”

Morrigan sighed. “That is south. But it will do. Another half day into the forest, we agreed. If there is no sign of the Dalish by then, we have likely already missed them.” She narrowed her eyes, and cast one of those long, piercing looks into the trees. “I would not be surprised. They would be fools to linger instead of moving north… away from the darkspawn.”

She said nothing else and, with a sudden turn upon her heel and a flap of those heavy, dark robes, she was striding off into the brush. 

It seemed sensible to follow. 


	3. Chapter 3

We pressed on again and, walking beside Leliana, I caught the sweet smell of the flowers she had gathered. It was familiar… a little like elfroot, but with a rosier aroma. The kind of fragrance you got in good soap, I thought, with wistful rags of dreams about hot baths and daily cleanliness passing fleetingly through my head.

She gave me a sidelong look, and smiled. “It’s a pretty scent, isn’t it?”

I blinked, a little chagrined at being caught staring. The tiny white blossom she’d strung into her hair winked at me, a pale star amid tresses of deep, fiery auburn.

“Yes,” I admitted. “It is. Andraste’s Grace, right? It’s a nice name, too. Um… what do they call them in Orlais?”

Leliana shook her head, smiling again, like I’d made a joke. “As a matter of fact, these little flowers are very rare there. I think they only grow in Ferelden… so I suppose my mother brought them with her when she left. My mother was Fereldan, you see. She was from Denerim originally… but she died when I was very young. The scent of these flowers? It is really the only thing I remember of her.”

“Oh.” I suddenly felt rather awkward. “I-I’m sorry.”

I should have thought of something better to say but, in that moment, my head was full of the memories I had of my own mother. They’d seemed clouded in the years since she died—mainly because Father had so often refused to speak of her—and I’d mourned the edges of details I thought I might have lost. Yet, it struck me then how much I _had_ remembered, how much of Mother I’d had… and how terribly unfair it must be to have nothing but broken memories and whispered impressions.

Leliana was looking at me, perhaps a little expectantly, and it was hard to tell whether she was mildly amused by my discomfort, or just waiting to see if I was going to say anything else. I cleared my throat.

“Er. I thought you were, um, Orlesian, though?”

It was a bit clumsy, but served to change the subject. She smiled sadly and gave a neat little shrug.

“Most people do. In truth, I suppose I am—I was born there, after all. But, you know, I consider myself a Fereldan.”

I nodded politely. She also considered herself blessed with visions from the Maker, and religious beliefs that most of the Chantry probably considered heretical, so I wasn’t going to argue.

Instead, I opted for making conversation. “How did your mother end up in Orlais, then, if she was from Denerim?”

There were a couple of assumptions it was reasonable to make, but I wanted to hear what Leliana thought of as the truth. For myself, I was too young to remember the end of the occupation and, in all honesty, I suspected alienage life under the Orlesians had been much the same as under any Fereldan ruler. Still, there were stories. Father had always spoken of the Orlesians with as much bitterness as I’d heard him speak of anything, and he had laid a great deal of store by equanimity and tolerance when it came to humans. He didn’t want me growing up full of hatred or, worse, cocky—not that, after what happened to Mother, there’d been much chance I’d escape with unbiased opinions.

All the same, I didn’t think there had ever been much of influx of Fereldans desperate to claw their way back into the Empire.

Leliana’s expression grew a little distant; a kind of dreamy vagueness that might have been mistaken for a wistful smile, had I not suspected she was avoiding mention of something.

“Oh, well…. My mother served an Orlesian noblewoman who lived here when Orlais ruled,” she said softly, gazing at the trees. “After Orlais was defeated and the common folk began to resent the presence of any Orlesian, the lady returned to Orlais. She took my mother with her.”

 _Common folk?_

I said nothing, refusing to allow the implications swirling behind her words to surface in my mind.

“I was born in Orlais,” Leliana continued, “and I did not set foot in Ferelden until much later. But, you know, Mother was _always_ telling me stories of her homeland. I think she missed it.”

I nodded slowly, actually beginning to take in her words. So, the daughter of a servant… probably just as illegitimate as Alistair, though likely with a much less illustrious sire. A ridiculous, yet oddly pleasing vision flitted through my head—that deep, glossy, red hair of Leliana’s, so like and yet not like the red that ran through Father’s side of the family—and I wondered, for a moment, if maybe our prettily mannered, graceful bard wasn’t elf-blooded. Perhaps she was the result of some Orlesian nobleman’s whim, forced on a hapless, foreign maid… but my imagination was running away with me, and giving me a spurious sense of superiority at apparently being the only member of our party who had come from a loving, at least partially secure home.

“Was she not happy in Orlais, then?” I asked delicately, peering at Leliana as if she might give something away with a flinch or a wince.

She just shook her head, and smiled that small, tight, wistful smile that she hid so easily behind.

“Oh, she wasn’t _un_ happy. We had a good life, and she liked Orlais well enough. I loved it, though. Val Royeaux was so vibrant… colourful. And, of course, Mother died when I was very young. I really know very little of her. I can’t say whether she would ever have chosen to come back or not, had she been able.”

“Ah.”

I nodded again, affecting sage wisdom, as if I truly understood. I thought I did, perhaps. In that moment—despite the leaf mould and mud gluing my boots to the ground further with every step, and the trees closing in around us like the jaws of some ramshackle trap—I thought very highly of my powers of perception, and my idle fancies made me feel very brave indeed.

“It must have been hard for you,” I offered, but Leliana widened those clear, beautiful eyes.

“Oh, no. No, not at all. In fact, I was very lucky. Lady Cecilie let me stay with her. Of course, I had no one else, and she _had_ been fond of my mother. She was quite old by then, and I think it gave her pleasure to give me the kind of opportunities a young girl would enjoy. She had me study music and dance, and I entertained her. She was very kind to me, and I had many advantages… though I have always thought it unfair that I have more memories of Cecilie than I do my own mother.”

Up ahead, Maethor growled and snapped at something in the undergrowth. It rocketed out from under the bracken and then shot up a tree. A squirrel, I realised, as the mabari bounced up on his hind legs, forepaws scrabbling at the trunk in hot pursuit.

“Idiot hound,” Morrigan observed, as Maethor staggered backwards, momentarily bipedal, and landed on his rump in an ungainly sprawl, still huffing indignantly at the rodent.

“Maybe next time, boy,” Alistair said, ruffling the hound’s ears as he passed.

Maethor grumbled, but got up and padded after him. Beside me, Leliana giggled prettily and that sound—that small, musical, delicate sound—made visions of ballrooms filled with painted lords and bouffanted ladies dance behind my eyes; all the things that, growing up in Ferelden, we thought we knew about Orlais.

When I was a child, people used to say that Val Royeaux’s alienage saw no sun until midday because the walls were so high. We heard murmurs about the brutality and imaginative cruelty of Orlesian masters, and tutted at the rumours that said ten times the number of elves as were in our district were packed into a space a third the size. Of course, we had those stories because we were elves, and nursed a perpetual need to feel we were better off than someone else… but I’d always thought there was a grain of truth there.

I glanced at Leliana. She was many things, but she had never seemed intentionally cruel to me. Naïve, perhaps, in some strange ways, and wily in others—and I believed what Alistair had said about her being a bard, and possibly more—but, even then, I still couldn’t work her out.

She had her chin slightly tilted, face tipped towards the trees as we walked, almost as if she was a child gazing with wonder at the scene of a woodland picnic… and yet I got the feeling she was studying and quietly gauging every single leaf.

“Do you miss anything about Orlais?” I asked, my voice low.

She looked sharply at me, and then flashed a shallow, delicate smile.

“Sometimes,” she admitted, and she gave a small sigh. “Hmm… I do miss Val Royeaux. It is truly like nowhere else. In other cities, the people are the lifeblood and the character, but Val Royeaux was always her own person, and her people little more than decorations.”

Well, _that_ was a minstrel’s answer if ever there was one.

“Oh?” I lofted an eyebrow, a little surprised by such an obviously artful answer.

Not just that, either… I wasn’t sure I liked the notion of people being decorations. It was an upside down way of making a city—which, admittedly, _did_ sound distinctly Orlesian.

“There was always music in Val Royeaux,” Leliana continued, her voice lent the roseate tone of nostalgia, and her words like the lines of a poem. “It would stream down from the many windows, both quiet refrains and triumphant choruses, and the glass would glitter like gold in the sunshine. And, of course, always floating above all that, you would hear the Chant coming from the Grand Cathedral. It was truly magnificent.”

I didn’t doubt it. There were probably poulterers and tanners and blacksmiths, too, of course… and butchers and carters and all those other people who made a city, and the multi-layered bouquet of aromas that went with it. Even Val Royeaux had to have nightsoilmen, after all, although I suspected no one would have thanked me for the suggestion.

“It sounds wonderful,” I said instead, watching that porcelain-perfect face grow dreamy and wreathed with memories.

Perhaps they really were more than a bard’s pretty lines.

Leliana smiled at me again, and it seemed more genuine.

“Oh, it would take me days to tell of the many splendours of Orlais: her golden fields, her lush meadows…. You asked if I missed it? Of course, there were good things and bad things about Orlais, like anywhere else. Sometimes I miss it dearly, and sometimes I am glad I am rid of it.” Her smile widened, and she inclined her head, leaning down a little to bridge the couple of inches in height between us. “You will laugh at this, I think, but what I miss most are the fine things I had when I was in Orlais.”

She laughed softly, and I supposed my confusion was written across my face.

“Fine things?” I echoed.

“You know!” Leliana waved a hand in the air, a gesture of vaguely explanatory dismissal. “Dresses. Fine dresses and furs. And _shoes_! Of course, the shoes. One can’t mingle with nobility with bad shoes, you see.”

My brow furrowed. “Oh. Can you not?”

“No, no. Orlais is very fashionable,” Leliana assured me, with an authoritative air that made me think I was being teased. “Almost ridiculously so, in truth. Ahh… but the _shoes_! Living with those ridiculous trends was worth it for the shoes.”

And, at that point precisely, she lost me.

Mingling with nobility was something I didn’t understand either—something that filled me with a faint nausea and a sense of inverted snobbery, to be honest—but to speak of shoes in tones that sounded practically romantic… that was a stretch too far.

“Were they… ridiculous shoes?” I hazarded.

She laughed. “Sometimes. You know, about ten years ago all the ladies went mad for shoes with soles as large and heavy as bricks. But it isn’t always that silly. When I left Orlais, the fashion was shoes with delicate, tapered heels and embellishments in the front—a ribbon, perhaps, or embroidery.” Her hands moved quickly through the air, describing the shapes and fripperies she could so clearly see in her head. “In soft colours, of course,” she added, as if that was important. “Naturally: it was the spring.”

Leliana looked expectantly at me, and I nodded, my brow still knotted.

“Ah. Shoes. Right. Wouldn’t, um… wouldn’t they be hard to walk in?”

She shrugged, looking a little crestfallen. “Perhaps. I certainly wouldn’t want to run in them, or have to enter battle, but for lounging in a lady’s sitting room? Perfect.”

“Oh.”

I nodded again, absently, like my head was a ball on a string bouncing untended. From what she said, Orlais really _was_ a foreign land… or maybe it was just me.

Despite the fact that, next to Leliana, I resembled little more than a smear of mud beside a rare and striking flower, I did have a few vestiges of femininity left. I understood the pleasure of a soft pair of leather slippers, of the kind we used to wear for best. I knew the importance of fine embroidery—even if my own skill with it was limited—and I appreciated a good piece of chintz or delicate lawn as much as the next girl… or as much as that girl who, so long ago, had run her hands down the silk panels in her wedding attire, and felt like a princess.

But… shoes for lounging in? Shoes dictated by fashions and bored noblewomen who had nothing more to do with their days than change their clothes?

The very thought made me shudder, and I couldn’t help wondering if Leliana knew that, somehow. She was still talking, though, and still wittering on cheerfully about shoes.

“…they were exquisite,” she said, waving her hand again, long fingers trailing a wistful arc through the air. “Beautifully made, and so elegant! Not at all like these clunky fur-lined leather boots you have in Ferelden. Ugh… just look at them.”

She made a grimace of distaste, and I peered down at my boots. They were soldier’s boots, caked with mud and rain spatters. Somewhere inside, under two pairs of odiferous, hairy socks, were my feet. Not soldier’s feet, but heading that way. I didn’t get such bad blisters now as I had at the beginning, and I was building up some heavy pads of callusing, but drying out the sweat and bandaging the leaky bits in front of the campfire still formed the basis of more evenings than I’d have preferred.

I wriggled my toes, and their movement didn’t even dent the leather of my boots. They just stood there, mud seeping around them, looking stolid and immoveable.

I glanced up. Leliana was still walking, as the others were. Wynne was coming up behind me, and I kicked my pace in again, catching up with Leliana as we passed yet another rotted monolith of a dead tree.

“At least they keep the cold out,” I observed.

She wrinkled her nose. “Oh, very well, they’re sturdy shoes, _yes_ , but sometimes a girl just wants to have pretty feet. Don’t you agree?”

She looked hopefully at me, and I truly couldn’t decide whether she genuinely didn’t understand the differences between us, wanted to underline them, or was just trying to bridge them in the best way she knew.

It would have been very easy to hate her then. So easy to look at her—beautiful, graceful, and charming—and let all my insecurities, my jealousies and guarded winces pour forth a lake of ice that I would never cross.

However, she had shown me her worth. For all that was hidden or suspicious about her, Leliana was compassionate. She had been kind to me, mostly, and she’d really cared about the people of Redcliffe, even before they bore her on their shoulders and made her their flame-haired Orlesian folk hero (and, oh, they would be telling stories about her for years to come!).

Besides, there was still a lot of road ahead of us, and camp was a small place with no room for sourness. At least, not any more of it than we were already carting around.

I nodded tentatively. “’Spose so. You can’t dance in boots like these.”

Leliana beamed. “You like to dance?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “We used to dance a lot back home. Harvest, Satinalia, Wintersend, Summerday… well, I say _dance_ …. It was any excuse for a knees-up, really. But there _was_ dancing. And drinking. And… well, fun.”

It was my turn to smile wistfully, and the echoes of old faces and old times pressed against my mind, bringing with them the taste of sweetened ale, the sound of fiddles, hand drums and pipes, and the half-forgotten rhymes of songs with very questionable lyrics. I remembered the Harvest dance when I had my first kiss, and Father coming around the side of Alarith’s shop and finding out about it, then fetching the boy concerned a hefty thump alongside the head before he dragged me home.

Happy days, generally speaking.

Leliana chuckled. “Hmm. I think I remember fun. In very vague terms, anyway.” She gave me a sidelong look, those glass-clear eyes alight with some bright new idea. “We should make time for music more, don’t you think? I have my lute now… I shall play some songs sometime, when we make camp.”

I snorted, more at her optimism than the idea itself. “Yes, and if we practice hard enough, perhaps we can dazzle the darkspawn with our performance. Maybe Alistair can break out his Remigold,” I added, though I didn’t even mean to.

She looked understandably perplexed, and I started to feel a little remorseful for my glibness.

“Only if there’s going to be a really _pretty_ dress,” Alistair called from a little way ahead. “I won’t just wear any old feed bag, you know.”

I hadn’t realised he was listening, much less that he remembered that dark little moment of absurd humour before Duncan’s fire, but my remorse instantly fled, and—as he glanced back at me over his shoulder and grinned, sniggering at Leliana’s open-mouthed confusion—I laughed.

The others might not understand it, but it was a good, honest, pure burst of mirth… and the sounds of merriment filtered up into the trees for what felt like it might have been the first time in centuries.

 **_~o~O~o~_ **

The forest changed as we got further in. I’d thought we had already entered it when we crossed through the pass—that the differences in the ground, the thickness of the trees, were markers enough—but I was wrong. I realised that when I looked up, and saw not gnarled, crooked trunks, heavy branches of pine and fir, and a ragged canopy of leaves, but tall, straight trees rising up all around us. I’d never seen the like before; to me, they were strange, as if someone had carved them, made struts and supports for this ethereal, silent world. I didn’t know anything could grow like that, but it was age that had done it. They were truly ancient trees, who’d long since ceased to compete for light or water, and now dominated the wildwood. The ground under our feet was thick and soft with their leavings, a carpet of brown needles and leaf mould, with the sprawling scrabble of fresh young growth springing up wherever light fell.

I don’t think it was quite what I expected although, at the time, I had no idea what I _had_ imagined it would be. The Brecilian Forest was an ancient place, shrouded in numinous secrecy and terrible rumours, and the very air I breathed seemed stifled and dark.

Of course, in stories, the enchanted forest is always green and verdant, and it is always spring or summer.

There were no paths to speak of. We began to slow, every direction just another mass of trees, and I swiftly realised that, with no purpose to our wandering, it would be all too easy for the first suggestion of heading back to be thrown.

Alistair glanced around us at the thickened throngs of trees.

“Where was it that you encountered the, uh… thing?” he asked nervously.

Zevran shrugged. “Further east, I believe, which would be—let me see—that way. The north is the side of the tree with the most moss on it, yes?”

Leliana wrinkled her nose. “These _all_ have moss on them.”

Morrigan gave a terse, disparaging sigh—but I didn’t see _her_ pointing out the way ahead. She just stood by a rough clump of bracken, her arms folded, glaring at the rest of us and, as I surveyed our fragmented little group, I worried that I was losing them.

I hadn’t forgotten how eager Alistair was to get back to tracking down Brother Genitivi, if it meant the possibility of saving Arl Eamon’s life, and that thought in itself made me square my shoulders, contrarily determined to continue.

I pointed towards a gap in the trees, marked by the remains of a fallen oak, now another mostly-rotted log, because decay seemed to be a constant in this place.

“That way,” I announced, and headed off as if I had the slightest clue of what I was doing.

We had yet to find any sign of the Dalish, or even any hint of water, but I had to keep hoping, even as the forest drew in around us, making the light itself thick and heavy. It was like being underwater, surrounded by a soft, timeless shell of silence, a cavernous cathedral of still, dim green.

We pushed on, our footsteps seeming cacophonous with the crack of every twig and the rustle of every leaf. I should have been concentrating more, but I was so determined that we would find some clue, some proof that the Dalish were there, that I was foolish enough to allow myself a moment’s arrogance.

I suppose I thought Zevran’s experience—well, _all_ their experiences—would have meant we’d know before something happened, but that was an assumption turned out to be as dangerous as it was optimistic.

It was the exact thing I’d known I had to guard against, and to watch for, and yet I didn’t even see it coming.

That particular patch looked no different to any other we’d passed through: tall, straight trees dwarfing crippled, stunted ones, with every square foot of the forest floor shrouded in a slough of dead leaves, bracken, straggly, winding weeds, and verdant clumps of ferns. The sky was visible only in broken patches through the canopy, and everywhere I looked I saw the rough pillars of bark and lichen, and low branches spreading out like arms.

Morrigan was walking a little ahead again, and I looked quizzically at her when she stopped, apparently listening for something. I didn’t see or hear anything, and neither she nor Wynne gave a call of alarm.

Maethor growled softly, and I had just started to think that maybe it was another squirrel that had distracted the witch, when it happened.

All I heard was the creak of branches, the groan of wood protesting and, for a moment, I was back at the site of Zevran’s ambush, diving for my life as a tree smashed into the ground and arrows began to rain upon me.

I glanced reflexively over my shoulder, half-expecting to see splinters of wood and massed ranks of hired thugs, but instead there was the ancient, coarse bark of trees and, among them, one tree… _moving_. Had I not known what was coming, I might have told myself if was my eyes playing tricks, or that it was just the movement of the breeze—but there was precious little wind, and definitely no mistaking the decisiveness with which those branches swung through the air.

I heard Zevran swear, and Morrigan loosed a blinding flash of energy that leapt up in a sheet between us and the creature.

In form, it was still a tree, though it had a more twisted, bent-over shape than those tall, stately giants of the forest, almost as if it had struggled against its own growing. It had, in a way, I supposed. Crooked branches protruded from its cracked trunk, and they crashed towards us like fists. Dead, brown leaves scattered like ashes, only a sparse crop remaining on its puckered, twisted limbs.

Wood splintered, the quiet of the place destroyed by the impact of those flailing limbs smashing through the undergrowth, and even other trees. This part of the forest was neither densely packed nor open clearing, and the great wooden clubs of branches hit out at their brethren, scything through them as if they were nothing but straw dolls.

We pulled back, scattering a little, the ground not to our advantage. I found my back pressed against a tall pine tree, tears of its sticky sap filling my nose with a sharp, faintly acrid smell, and my heart pounded as, less than twelve feet away, a demon in a wooden prison screamed in fractured silence, thrashing with rage at the life it felt pass by.

I supposed it was stupid to take shelter against another tree, and I glanced up at my protector. It wasn’t moving, or trying to kill me. That was probably a good thing, but was there only one of them here?

I leaned out around the pine, trying to see what was happening, and almost caught a face full of splintered wood. It was like the most violent storm imaginable, yet made all the more frightening by the fact the creature—despite its obvious anger—was not making a sound. I was used to things that wanted me dead roaring and snarling at me, and in truth I would have preferred the growls of darkspawn, or even the guttural, broken susurrations of the walking dead.

I couldn’t see all of the others, but Sten had drawn his greatsword and appeared to be trying to face the thing down.

“ _Anaan esaam Qun!_ ” he bellowed, taking a swing at the nearest branch.

His blade crushed and cleaved the limb, and the air was filled with the sharp smell of sap and green wood. A stale kind of wind seemed to whip the trees then, though it was hard to tell whether it was the back draught of those flailing blows or some other, more ethereal thing. I could have sworn I heard a scream of rage upon it, and I unsheathed my sword, wriggling out of my pack and dumping it to the ground as I began to dodge and dart my way to Sten’s side.

Maethor was barking and snapping at the tree-demon, but it caught him easily with one bough—they were surprisingly supple, I saw, capable of bending and slapping back with great flexibility and terrible force—and he yelped as he was thrown aside.

A burst of ice encased one angry branch, courtesy of Morrigan, and Sten lunged to swing at it, almost missing the twin that was coming up behind him. I yelled, and he ducked, feinting right and then pulling back to land another mighty blow on the wood.

Splinters, leaves, and small chips of wood flurried like snow around us, and I tried to squint at the place the tree joined the earth.

“Can it move?” I asked, raising my voice above the cracks and raging roars. “It can’t move… can it?”

Sten didn’t answer me, and I threw myself to the side to avoid the club of another branch. The thing never stopped _moving_ … it made it almost impossible to work out how many limbs it had, and what it meant to do with them. Leliana sprinted behind me, dodging the deadly boughs effortlessly as she tried to get a better look.

“I don’t think so,” she called, as a flare of light burst near the tree’s trunk, and the creak of wood gave way to the grating of stone.

Wynne had attempted to petrify it… magic I’d not seen before, or even thought possible. I looked towards her and saw the mage sagging, pallid and visibly trembling as she reached for support from the nearest non-possessed tree. Her spell had encased most the thing’s main trunk in a second skin of stone, but it was fighting back. Its branches jerked and rustled in angry spasms, the whole rough head of its curled, dark leaves shaking as it appeared to try and strike at the nearest whisper of life.

The thing seemed pretty thoroughly rooted to the ground, as far as I could see. It thrashed and strained, its roots creaking like the mooring ropes of some great ship, and though its reach was far enough to give us plenty of cause for alarm—and far enough to rip through a large circle of trees around it—it couldn’t physically follow us if we ran… could it? Surely not. Even if there _was_ a demon in there, it was still constrained by the physical form of the tree.

I began to breathe a little more easily through my disbelief… until I heard the sound of creaking start to come from behind me as well. Maethor snarled, and I recalled, with no little amount of horror, just how many trees we were amongst.

“There are others!” Morrigan shouted, whirling to face the potential avenue of demons. “They scent us now, like wolves!”

She was right. Wynne’s petrification spell was failing, and there were more of the trees beginning to move, the hatred and hunger of the demons spreading like the susurrations of a warm summer breeze.

Alistair looked at me, wide-eyed and fear-streaked across the littered ground.

“Run?” he suggested.

I nodded vehemently, casting a desperate look around my disparate, panicked little group. “Run!”

We did. All of us, breaking ranks and pelting back the way we’d come, ducking and dodging the swiping blows. I snatched up my pack and, head down, ran with the undergrowth tearing at my legs, and thuds of branches crashing behind me. The air was thick with splinters, falling leaves and clods of flying earth, the whole forest apparently alive with the roaring, creaking, wordless howls of these crazed dyads.

Only Sten tried to stand his ground, bellowing a qunari warcry as his sword hacked at one low-swiping branch. I saw him, cussed, and, dropping my pack again, dashed back. Alistair yelled at me not to be an idiot, but I ignored him and, hurdling a fallen bit of wooden debris—a severed tree limb, all green sap and fresh wood—flung myself at Sten.

“Come on!” I yelled, tugging at his arm. “Leave them!”

He spun, the force of his movement shaking me away as if I was nothing more than a housefly; a minor irritation to be swatted. I thought that was the fate awaiting me when those brilliant violet eyes glared down at me, Sten’s rough-cast face contorted into a grin of rage.

“Go!” I shouted. “Leave them!”

A crescent of four trees surrounded his right side, and I would have sworn to the fact they hadn’t all been there when we first hit that particular spot. One tree might look like another… but it somehow didn’t seem so fanciful to think these demonic creatures could drag themselves through the forest that contained them.

Sten’s blade swung past me, intercepting another blow, and wood shattered in great chips that cascaded through the air.

“You would flee? Leave these demons here?” he demanded, as the greatsword aced above my head.

I ducked, wishing I’d left him to get himself killed if his stupid bloody qunari pride demanded it. The whole avenue was alive now, ranks of the damn trees blocking our retreat to the others.

“They’re not important,” I yelled, which seemed blindingly stupid, because the thing that’s trying to kill you is always, at that moment, the most immediate thing you can dwell on. “We don’t need this fight!”

Sten’s eyes locked onto mine, then narrowed, and he nodded. With a great bellow of effort, he brought his sword down across another thrashing branch and, ducking, diving, and frankly just running on sheer luck and terror, we scrambled our way through the maddened trees.

We couldn’t get back the way we’d come, though I could hear Maethor barking, just the other side of what now seemed an impenetrable thicket. It was impossible; the forest couldn’t just _move_ around us like that, could it?

Of course it could, I reminded myself. The whole bloody place was lousy with demons, the Veil so thin it was little more than a pocket handkerchief laid over the gaping holes that led to the Fade… or maybe the Void itself.

We ran, Sten and I, searching for a way back through the trees, and succeeding only in getting so thoroughly turned around it was a wonder we didn’t find ourselves back in the middle of the demons. I was sure they’d come upon us from behind, moving somehow… threading through the forest in its very lifeblood, their roots running under this sandy, rotten loam, then breaking from beneath the ground to strangle us.

As I was starting to panic—and knew that I had underestimated how truly uncomfortable I really felt in this crowded, green place, at once choked and left vulnerable by the great living monoliths that were so unlike safe, solid walls of timber and stone—I saw flames burst in the air.

Wynne and Morrigan, working in concert, were blasting a path through the trees; fire tamed by ice, used like a blade to carve its way towards us. I headed towards the smell and the brightness of their magic, Sten’s footsteps thudding heavily behind me. Dead leaves and the litter of the woodland floor scuffed up in our wake, yet the forest itself appeared to shrink back around us, the way suddenly clearer… and that seemed reasonable. Trees would fear fire, wouldn’t they? That, above all other things because, demons or not, they had no defence against it.

Zevran picked his way through the broken, torn edges of the path the mages had cut, and nodded at me. His face betrayed his fear, and showed just close we had come to falling prey to those things. He glanced up at Sten, and smiled mirthlessly.

“You know, you really should learn not to take every single demon as a personal insult.”

Sten grunted, and the soft hiss of steel told me he was sheathing his sword. I looked down, and saw my own blade was still clutched tightly in my hand. My fingers were almost numb and, as I tried to slow my breathing, it took a conscious effort to fumble the sword back into its scabbard.

I sniffed, and glanced at my companions. Mostly, they all looked worried, and with perfectly good reason. We should have expected a concerted attack like that—should have been prepared for it—and we’d failed. We didn’t even know how to take the damn things down properly. I should have made sure we’d discussed it more thoroughly, should have insisted there was a better plan than just hoping it didn’t happen. It was my fault, and it could have been so much worse.

I saw that blame on their faces; saw it in Wynne’s ashen shakiness and Leliana’s grim quiet, in Morrigan’s yellow-eyed stare… and even in the hot, angry glare that Alistair shot me.

That, I hadn’t really expected, and it stung. I looked away, chastened, and a little unsure as to whether I should take it as a sign of his concern for my safety, or a challenge to what little authority I possessed. I tried to focus on the former.

Still, though we were safe, we were turned around and—I had to admit it—lost. It was hard to maintain any sense of direction in the vastness of the forest, or even an idea of the passing time.

“So,” Zevran said, his gaze shifting slowly from me to Alistair, then to Morrigan, and lastly Wynne. “Where do we go now?”

I squinted at the trees surrounding us. They looked just like all the other bloody trees, and there was no use whatsoever in my trying to tell directions by stupid things like moss or leaves. I was blind and confused, and I wished we’d just headed straight for Lake Calenhad, and stuck to the simplicity of the Imperial Highway.

“Um… I… I don’t know,” I admitted grudgingly, frowning at the ranks of the mottled tree trunks around us, ancient bark interspersed with the dark, foreboding greens of pines and firs that seemed to swallow the light. “I… really don’t know.”

Oh, yes. What a leader I was.

Morrigan sighed irritably. “’Tis growing tedious. I shall find somewhere for us to make camp.”

“Oh?” Alistair sneered, but he only really managed a very half-hearted jibe. “You’re suddenly a woodland scout, are you?”

She ignored him, and fixed me with that ochre-gold stare that I found very hard to challenge. “I suggest we rest, then attempt to regain some ground tonight. If the Dalish are to be found anywhere within this part of the forest, ’twould be easier to look for campfires, would it not?”

I nodded slowly. “Perhaps. But—”

“Then it is settled. Much preferable to wasting any more time traipsing through the mud for no good reason.”

A small frown dented her pale forehead and, if it hadn’t been Morrigan, I’d have said she looked nervous and unsure. She smoothed down the front of her robes with one hand, then cleared her throat, shucked off her pack, and unceremoniously shoved her black iron staff into Wynne’s hands.

“You will all stand back and give me some room. I would prefer you do not watch while I… change, although if it saves you gawping later, you may do so. I care not.”

I didn’t understand what she was talking about, but I knew a lie when I heard it. In anyone else, it would have been a whimper of self-conscious vulnerability. I started to frame a question, but then I heard Wynne’s intake of breath, and I felt a strange sensation crawling up my spine, like cold water trickling in reverse.

Morrigan closed her eyes, took a long, slow breath, and then the world seemed to flex a bit, as if the air itself was pushing against my eyes, trying to turn inside out.

Magical energy began to coil in dark glimmers along her bare arms. Sten shifted uncomfortably and muttered a word in the qunari tongue that sounded like a disbelieving imprecation. I heard Zevran give a low whistle, and then there was a sudden thump, and a great, dull echo of a sound that seemed to come from inside my own head. It coincided with a flash of light that wasn’t so much actual light as the sudden absence of it… as if the place Morrigan had been standing had simply eaten itself up, and shrunk down to the size of a copper piece, condensed into black nothingness.

At that precise moment, two other things happened. First—with a whisper of cloth, the jangle of metal, and the soft thud of leather—Morrigan’s robes hit the ground, stirring up the leaf-litter all around them. Secondly, there was a shrill, coarse, cawing and, where the witch had stood, a large raven with glossy black feathers was beating its wings, flapping awkwardly against the air. Maethor growled and loosed a short, sharp bark, but stayed where he was and didn’t lunge for the bird… or whatever it was.

The raven dropped to the ground in a tangle of feathers, and cawed again, which sounded almost exactly like a frustrated curse. Its head bobbed, and I stared at its huge golden eyes. There was absolutely no mistaking their colour, but I didn’t see Morrigan staring back at me; just a bird, albeit a highly intelligent one. Its beak opened in another sharp call and, those broad wings spread out wide, the raven took off and barrelled between the trees, flying up towards the canopy.

We all stood there in silence, listening to the creature rattle about in the branches, and to those angry-sounding caws growing more distant.

After what seemed like several minutes, Leliana cleared her throat gently and, leaning forwards, scooped up Morrigan’s robes. She brushed the dead leaves and twigs from them, taking care to tuck the witch’s ornate jewellery into the folds of cloth.

“She’ll want these for later, I expect,” she said. “It must be very inconvenient, always having to come back for them. Imagine if someone just walked off with your clothes!”

Zevran sucked his teeth thoughtfully. “It does tend to put a damper on the day, I’ll give you that. And you can forget about being inconspicuous.”

“Well, you would know, I imagine,” Leliana said mildly, and he gave her a suave smile.

I was amazed that either of them could take it so easily in their stride. We had just watched Morrigan turn into a bird and fly off, and despite knowing that shouldn’t surprise me—I knew what she was, and Alistair had been speculating about Chasind shapeshifting magic since we’d been following her out of the Korcari Wilds—but… I don’t know. I just hadn’t expected to actually see her _do_ it.

I glanced at Wynne, and found her peering up into the trees with a strange look on her face, her lower lip drawn in and her brows tight.

“You read about it, of course,” she murmured, apparently half to herself. “But to see it done is quite another matter. _Quite_ another matter indeed….”

Overhead, the branches rattled again, and a few leaves drifted down as the raven settled on a nearby tree, cawed for our attention, then took off again. We exchanged glances, and then trooped obediently after the bird.

Alistair grumbled and hefted his shield on his arm, holding it so high it was virtually over his head as he eyed the canopy suspiciously.

“What are you doing?”

He looked at me as if I was an idiot. “What does it look like? I _told_ you she was a shapeshifter. That bird’s still Morrigan, and I don’t trust her not to—”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” I shook my head, and followed on after Wynne, Maethor padding at my heels with his nose quivering curiously.

“She’d do it,” Alistair said darkly, trudging on behind me. “You mark my words. She _would_ do it.”


	4. Chapter 4

I understood why Morrigan had been reticent about changing her form in front of us. Assuming she could do different animals, and not just the raven, then the magic explained all those neat kills on hunting trips (of course, I'd never figured her for using snares or traps), and that was deeply unsettling knowledge to be faced with.

Somehow, just having suspected her of being capable of it was very different to having seen it happen first-hand, and I clearly wasn't the only one who felt that way. Certainly, I wouldn't have cared to be on the receiving end of the looks we were all guilty of giving her when, finally, we stopped in a small clearing.

That is, Morrigan stopped. The raven flapped down to the ground, then made a violent stirring of the leaves, cawing and beating its wings at us every time we tried to enter the clearing, rising up a good four or five feet and screaming in hoarse fury.

"I, er, I think she needs a moment of privacy," Leliana suggested, coming forwards with the bundle of Morrigan's clothes.

The bird cawed again, and allowed Leliana into the clearing to put the robes down. She retreated, and stood with the rest of us behind a clump of trees and bracken, while a series of peculiar noises—followed by some deep breathing, and the rustle of fabric and leather—indicated Morrigan regaining her normal self.

I stared studiously at the canopy until she barked a crisp "Come!" and, with relief, we filed into the clearing she'd found.

She had done well, however, and led us to a place that seemed safe enough to stay while we rested, and tried to work out exactly how far away we were from where we'd entered the forest. Trees still fringed everything, of course, and I nearly shivered just to look at them, but the thick leaf-litter on the ground and the fronds of fern and bracken in the brush had the look of soft comforts, while the fallen tree at the far edge of the clearing—obviously a fairly recent casualty of age, or perhaps a storm—had opened up the canopy a little, and made things feel just slightly less stifling.

All the same, we inspected every single tree in the clearing before we made camp. None of them grew violent in response to a quick kick, so things appeared safe enough… at least for a while.

Sten built a small fire. Wood was more plentiful than it had been in ages, but actually using it felt a little odd. The supplies we'd had from Bodahn were lasting well, though we weren't carrying a great deal of food. Being Bodahn, naturally, he'd had more in the way of interesting artefacts and drawn-out tales to sell us than rations, but nevertheless Wynne and Leliana managed to make something approaching a meal out of a few bits of dried meat, some grains, and three cups of our jealously guarded water.

Putting the tents up seemed almost wasted effort when we didn't mean to rest too long, but it was a better prospect than sleeping out in the open, unprotected. Anyway, as the canvas began to go up, and the smell of dinner started to tug on the air, things did start to feel a little bit safer.

Morrigan retreated from the rest of us, of course, as far as space would allow. She moved right over to the far side of the clearing and made herself a scrape by one of the trees, her staff stuck in the ground beside her like a pennant or a warning sign.

The others were sprawled out by the tents or sitting by the cookpot, anticipating the prospect of food. Only Maethor looked up as, finished with the business of my own tent, I brushed my hands against my leathers, and began to venture tentatively over towards her. Alistair glanced up as I passed him, and shot me a questioning look, the opinion that I was either wasting my time or taking my life in my hands written large on his face. I said nothing.

She barely blinked at my approach. The angle of her head shifted a little at the sound of my footsteps crackling on the leaves, but that was all.

I cleared my throat awkwardly. "Um… Morrigan?"

She waved a hand dismissively at me. I decided to take it as an invitation, and squatted opposite her in the musty, damp, sweet-earth smell of the leaf-litter.

"I was, uh, wondering—"

"So. Full of questions, are you?" she asked darkly, her tone flat and cynical.

I hadn't imagined she'd make it easy for me. My fingertips dandled idly in the crisp leaf-litter, and I tilted my head to the side.

"Can you blame me? I'd never seen anything like that before. It was… very impressive."

Her head snapped around, and despite the strength of that golden stare she seemed very tired. The swoops of shadow she painted around her eyes were worn, her lips rubbed to a near-normal shade, and her pale skin had that ashen hue I'd seen when she exhausted herself before. Clearly, changing one's shape was no mere party trick, even for a mage as powerful as I believed her to be.

She glared at me, and the hardness of her eyes seemed both challenge and defence. I wet my lower lip, and tried again.

"I wasn't raised around magic. You know that… so, I'm ignorant, I suppose. Is it a gift? Something you're born able to do, or—?"

Morrigan curled her lip. "'Tis a skill. A skill of Flemeth's, taught over many years in the Wilds."

"Oh. And hard to learn, right?"

The hardness in those ochre-yellow eyes seemed to lessen just a little, and she snorted. "Perhaps."

It was growing dark now, rather earlier than we'd hoped, and the shadows folded around us like wings. Over near the fire, Wynne clanged the ladle against the side of the cookpot, and Maethor whined impatiently. Zevran was talking quietly—quietly for him, at any rate, with very little expansive or suave smiling—and, from the few words I caught, I gathered it was about the Dalish. I supposed he'd decided to share the story of his mother with the others. Maybe he thought it would help them, or focus their thoughts on what we were looking for… or maybe it was just another opportunity to glamorise himself. Either way, I wished him well of it.

"Anyway," I said, looking studiously at the witch, "I was concerned. I _am_ , I mean. After the beating you took at the Peak—"

She sneered, reminding me of the reasons I hadn't pressed the subject before.

"I am healed," Morrigan snapped. "The old woman _does_ have her uses. And we rested before moving on again. There is nothing wrong with me, and 'twould take more than a few changes of my form to sap my strength entirely. You may all be sure of that."

I sighed, a little annoyed by the brusqueness with which she pushed away almost every attempt I made to be friendly. Besides, I couldn't help feeling she was protesting too much. "That wasn't exactly what I meant, but I'm glad to hear it, I suppose."

Morrigan's lips twitched, something rather like an amused smirk playing around her mouth.

"The Chasind tell of us, you know," she said, after a moment, and her tone was curious… a cross between taunting and wheedling.

Unsurprised, I arched my brows. "Do they?"

"Indeed. They say how we witches assume the forms of creatures to watch them from hiding, and how—when a child is alone and separated from his tribe—we strike."

Well, that didn't sound pleasant.

"Strike?" I echoed.

She snorted softly. "Mm. We drag the young boy, kicking and screaming, to our lair to be devoured. A most amusing legend… though whether 'tis truth or not, I cannot say. My lifespan is but a fraction of Flemeth's. That she has never done it in _my_ experience is not proof of anything."

It seemed wonders never ceased. Morrigan was showing me her sense of humour. I was more than a little honoured by it, though I didn't want to admit that, or indeed to admit how intrigued I was by the witch and her craft. Her magic—the magic we had seen that day—fascinated and repelled me in equal measure, just as did so much about the mage herself, and that dark, brutal whisper of the Wilds that still clung to her.

I smiled, despite myself, and as her lips curved further, exposing a hint of white teeth beneath the unevenly worn paint, a thought tugged at my mind.

"C-can you be, um, people, too? I mean, another human, or—?"

Morrigan's smile vanished, informing me that I'd said something silly, and she shook her head curtly.

"No. The form of an animal is different from my own. A bird, a wolf, a cat… these are forms I know. One may study the creature, learn to move as it does, to _think_ as it does." She leaned forwards a little, and her eyes seemed to burn with a fierce kind of pride in the knowledge, before she appeared to realise there was little point speaking of it with me. She shrugged. "In time, this allows one to become as it is. I gain nothing by studying another human. I already am the same as they are; I learn nothing."

My brow furrowed. It seemed odd that she would fail to see the advantages of such a thing, though I supposed she'd never had need of it.

I couldn't help thinking, though, if I had that power, if _I_ could become someone else… would I? Would I ever have crept from my own wilderness and ventured into a foreign place, if it meant the freedom to walk untrammelled, to run as wild as the wolves she spoke of?

It wasn't something I had ever imagined before, yet suddenly I could almost taste how wonderful it would be to soar as an eagle, run as a hound… walk as a man.

I shook the thoughts away. They were deceitful and cheap, and I wasn't a mage anyway, so there was no sense in taunting myself with impossibilities. I looked carefully at Morrigan, and tried to ignore the way my stomach was tightening on the approaching prospect of food. The air was cold, and smelled of stew and leather, overlaying the damp earthiness of the woodland floor, and yet the ever-present shapes of trees seemed to loom blacker than the darkness itself.

"So… you haven't, or you actually _can't_?" I asked… perhaps foolishly.

The witch glared at me. "I told you: there would be no point. I would learn nothing."

"You only, uh, _change_ to learn, then?"

Morrigan's gaze wavered a little, and I wasn't sure whether I'd exposed an inconsistency, or struck at a nerve she'd been trying to conceal.

"Yes," she said, though the smallest trace of uncertainty seemed to cling to the word. "That is to say…. Well, _you_ may look upon this world and think you know it well. You do not. _I_ have smelled it as a wolf, listened as a cat, an prowled shadows that you never dreamed existed."

She leaned forward again, the look on her face a fierce, sudden challenge, and I fought to hold my ground, my back tightening so I wouldn't sway away from the heat of her gaze, and land on my arse in the leaves.

Her mouth bowed, like a dog about to bare its teeth, and the grainy dimness of shadows wreathed her face, making her look like the white centre to some strange, night-blooming flower. The fire at the other side of the clearing burned brighter by contrast and—as something Zevran said appeared to make Leliana laugh softly—I fought the urge to glance over towards it.

I held the look of unwavering, contemptuous confrontation in Morrigan's eyes and then, in a moment, she seemed to soften, as if something I'd said or done had been the passing of an invisible test.

"There _were_ nights the Wilds called to me." She shrugged dismissively. "That is true, and it was a life with little amity. I neither knew nor wished to know the world of men, filled with people and buildings and… _things_."

Her hand twitched again, an irritable little movement that, for a moment, looked the ruffling of a bird's wing. I watched the motion of her half-spread fingers in the air, and wondered how difficult it was for her to shake off the mind of the raven.

"'Twas of no matter, you see. If I wished companionship, I ran with the wolves and flew with the birds. If I spoke, 'twas to the trees."

Distracted by my thoughts, I glanced at the blind-eyed oaken monoliths fringing our camp. _Ugh_. "And did they speak back?"

Morrigan curled her lip. "Do not be foolish."

"Sorry. I just meant— well, when you're like… that…." It was my turn to gesticulate vaguely, though my hard, freckled little paws didn't resemble white bird's wings in the way hers did. "What do they think of you? The wolves, or…?"

She arched those thin brows, and the worn creases of shadow around her eyes shifted like dark wrinkles. "Think of me? Hmph. I could not say. They do not shy away… perhaps they do not even recognise that I am different. But, what they _think_ , I do not know. No matter my form, I am still human, and they still beasts. I am not," she added, with a touch of steel in her tone, "like them."

"No," I said, turning my face from that hard, ochre glare. "I suppose not."

Well, truer words were rarely spoken. Morrigan was like nothing I'd ever encountered, and I still hadn't come to terms with her nature.

The kindnesses she'd done—sparing the life of the blood mage at Redcliffe, or pressing balms for my feet upon me—loomed in my mind, and I wanted to believe that her cruelty was a façade, a spiky shell she hid behind to save herself from embarrassment in a world that felt just as alien to her as it did to me… but we weren't sisters. We weren't any kind of natural kin in spirit, race, or history, and I couldn't ignore the feeling that there was much more to these different sides of Morrigan than I could possibly understand.

To me, that night, she was like the forest itself. Her duality and her mystery seemed knitted into the shadows that fell between the tree roots, and in that wild place she was every bit as dangerous as the dyads we'd encountered. I was under no illusions about that, and yet I found myself wondering just how much of everything I knew about her _was_ illusion.

For all her dark glamour and hard edges, Morrigan seemed to have vulnerabilities, and I wasn't sure if they were there because they were true… or because she wanted me to see them.

I frowned as I ventured to look up again. Near the fire, Wynne was smiling at Alistair. I'd gathered he was still worried about her by the way he was sticking so closely to her side, though she didn't look as pale or weary as she had. Leliana was sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, managing to look femininely boyish as the firelight glimmered on her skin. I turned my gaze to Morrigan, and felt the coolness of the night on my cheeks; the two of us, sitting here, swathed in shadows.

"I did once creep beyond the edge of the Wilds," she said, and she sounded almost wistful, her stare fixed on the tangled mass of bracken and brambles beside us.

Deep in the undergrowth, something scurried… a mouse, probably. Morrigan's eyes seemed to track the sound, as if she could pinpoint the creature by its scampering rustles.

"I did so in animal form, remaining in the shadows and watching these strange townsfolk from afar."

"You were… curious?"

Not as little interest in the human world as she'd said, then. I watched the fleeting look of cool disapproval flit across her face.

"I was but a child, used only to the templars who would occasionally come to seek us. Mother would have me play bait for them—a little girl to scream and run, and lure them ever closer to their doom—but they were fools."

She almost seemed to relish saying it, and I couldn't hide my wince, though I said nothing. I might have grown up almost entirely ignorant of magic and thinking templars were just guardsmen in another uniform but, ever since the first time Alistair and I were led to Flemeth's strange little hut, I'd been learning more every day about the realities of mages and their hunters.

Besides, I knew all too well that, sometimes, survival brings with it a steel-cold, dark taste of pleasure at winning… delight in taking a victor's blade to one who would have ended you upon it.

"You wanted to see what the world was like for them," I said instead, expecting her to stare me down, or declare this oddly convivial little chat of ours emphatically over. "Why shouldn't you?"

"Hmm."

Morrigan smiled then; an actual, honest smile. It was only small, but I saw it.

"So, what did you find?"

She shrugged, the feathers and ragged edges of her robes shifting against her pale shoulders. "I happened upon a noblewoman by her carriage, adorned in sparkling garments the like of which I had never before seen. I was dazzled. This, to me, seemed what true wealth and beauty must be."

Again, Morrigan's face took on that contemplative look, and she stared thoughtfully into the bushes.

"I snuck up behind her, and stole a golden hand mirror from the carriage. 'Twas encrusted with gems—a most valuable thing—and I hugged it to my chest with delight as I sped back into the Wilds."

She tilted her head to the side, like someone recalling a particularly lovely melody, and her lips parted just a little… only for that small, nostalgic smile to be wiped away, replaced with a look of haughty coldness.

"Naturally, Flemeth was furious with me. I had not yet come into my full power, but I had risked discovery for the sake of a pretty bauble—risked both of us, for doubtless, had I been captured and put to torture, I would have revealed _her_ whereabouts. So, to teach me a lesson, Flemeth took the mirror and smashed it upon the ground. I was heartbroken."

Those ochre-yellow eyes met mine again, once more full of challenge and mild disdain. They narrowed at my look of wounded incomprehension, and the thinning of Morrigan's lips told me, even before the words were out of my mouth, that my reaction was living down to her expectations.

"But you were just a child! That was—"

Cruel, I was going to say. She didn't let me finish.

"Foolish," Morrigan said sharply. "No, Flemeth was right to break me of my fascination. Beauty and love are fleeting and have no meaning. Survival has meaning. _Power_ has meaning. Without those lessons I would not be here today, as difficult as they might have been."

I stared, aghast. Such words were the antithesis to all I'd ever been, all I'd ever known. I wanted to be appalled, and yet… what had love and family and closeness brought me?

The memory of Mother's death welled like a fresh, bleeding wound in my mind, and after it came others. My uncle Merenir, killing himself slowly with drink; those dark nights when Soris would come to our door with a black eye or a split lip, and ask Father to help. He always would, and—because we were _family_ —the cracks would be daubed over until it happened again. A dozen faces surged behind my eyes. Nessa, who would have been better off if I'd never tried to help her, and Nola, and poor little Valora, and my beloved Shianni, memories of her muddled up so that she was at once weeping at her father's funeral, and sobbing like I'd never heard anyone sob before… and never wanted to hear again. And now they were all gone, the whole alienage purged to a cinder because of me… simply because I had been one of them.

Perhaps belonging wasn't worth as much as it seemed.

Perhaps, as the witch said, love was merely a fleeting thing, and only survival mattered. And I was still here, wasn't I? I was still alive, awakening to the shadows that shrouded me, because what mattered was the task that lay ahead. What mattered was ending the Blight, and Grey Wardens were meant to do that, whatever the price.

"I suppose," I said consideringly, peering at Morrigan in the dimness, "thinking like that, it makes you stronger, doesn't it?"

She nodded. "Yes. And strength, after all, _is_ power." One bare shoulder flexed again, and the light of the rising moon glinted in a thin sliver against the jewels she wore at her neck. "Perhaps I find myself, at times, wondering what might have become of the girl with the beautiful golden mirror… but such fantasies have no place amidst reality. And such is how it must be, do you not agree?"

I wrinkled my nose, and nodded grudgingly. My legs were sore from so long crouching, and my stomach grumbled at the clinking of bowls from beside the fire. Wynne was about to begin serving supper, and I noticed Maethor presenting a very stately sitting position in hopes of titbits.

Affection washed through me, despite the hard words… affection for all of them, these people who had joined with me because—whatever their own reasons—they believed in doing something _right_.

A sneaking voice at the back of my mind told me that was idealism. Morrigan was here because Flemeth had forced her to join us, and Sten because he was a convict with no other option. Zevran—whether he truly believed he was repaying a debt or an oath of fealty—was just lucky we hadn't killed him and, while Leliana claimed her vision had motivated her, the day we'd met her, she'd already had a pack with her and had been trying to get out of Lothering. I half-suspected she'd been on the run since Orlais, though I had no notion of what might lay behind her. Even Maethor had imprinted himself on me by chance and happenstance rather than conscious decision.

No, of all of us, only Wynne had actively chosen to come when she could have stayed at the Tower. Even Alistair—and, my newer and more complicated feelings aside, I still believed he was the best of us—was in the middle of this mess simply because he couldn't be anywhere else. He and I had survived where others had fallen, and we had a price to pay for that, however bitter it seemed.

I looked at Morrigan, her dark brows arched in enquiry.

"You're right," I said softly.

"Indeed?" She sounded more than a little smug, and her lips twitched into a smirk. "Then you do not consider me an unnatural abomination to be put to the torch?"

I shook my head wearily as Wynne began to serve the stew, and rose to my feet.

"Honestly, Morrigan? No. I don't think so. I think doing _that_ would just make you angry."

She surprised me then. Those dark lips split wide and, throwing her head back to reveal that long, white neck, she laughed. It was a sound as delicate and sharp as black glass breaking and, as I turned towards the fire, I felt the others' quizzical glances on me.

It was going to be a long night.

_**~o~O~o~** _

We ate, but it was hard to rest, even after we agreed to take the majority of the night in the clearing, staying longer than we'd initially planned, and moving on before the dawn. Morrigan was a little twitchy about it, but grudgingly conceded we could probably all do with the break. We decided to split the night into watches—something we'd rarely bothered to do before, as Maethor was such a useful guard dog, and we'd faced so little danger on the road—but it was clear no one was going to get more than the minimum of sleep.

Though I was to take second watch alongside Alistair, it was not with anticipation that I lay, still dressed, upon my bedroll, waiting as the minutes slipped past. Fatigue tugged at me, and yet worry painted ugly scenes behind my eyes. In the morning, I decided we'd have to head out of the forest. Whether the Dalish were here or not, it wasn't worth getting ourselves killed over… no matter how much I hated myself for thinking that. I wanted to find them. I wanted to find them so badly—to know they were real, know they were alive—but I had to be reasonable, didn't I? And yet, it was reasonable to believe we _needed_ the Dalish. We needed every ally we could get and, if they were as magnificent in battle as Sten said, perhaps their aid could be the one thing that turned back the darkspawn horde.

I wanted to think that. I wanted to fall asleep so I could have the hazy half-dream that danced across my mind, in which elves saved all of Thedas from destruction, and even King Cailan himself got down on bended knee to thank them… only, of course, Cailan was dead.

I rolled onto my side, my head suddenly and uncomfortably full of memories of Ostagar, on a night when the sky turned red with fiery arrows, and I ran past the bodies of men torn in half, only to reach a tower full of monsters.

One good thing about the Brecilian Forest, I thought bitterly, was that it seemed mercifully free of darkspawn. In fact, we'd not encountered any since the rogue band south-east of Lake Calenhad, and that made me wonder how slowly the horde was travelling. I wished I could read the map better, or know more things about how armies moved… if the darkspawn _did_ move like an army, instead of a pestilent swarm. I had no idea how long we had before they gushed up the valley like a torrent. Would Redcliffe even _be_ there, if we managed to find Brother Genitivi and his magic cure? The castle was in a defensible position, yes, but they wouldn't hold out forever. Nothing could, not against that kind of onslaught, surely.

I opened my eyes then, afraid of the possibility of dreams, and the great, dark shape that spread its wings over them.

Movement outside my tent made me catch my breath, before a familiar low whistle sounded.

" _Psst_. You awake?"

I ducked out of the tent flap and found Alistair, looking frowsty in partial armour, with his sheathed sword in his hand, standing close by. On the other side of the smouldering fire, I saw Leliana and Zevran retiring to their respective tents, and I nodded companionably. Zev had already ducked into his tent, but Leliana gave me a quiet, tired smile.

Alistair stifled a huge yawn and scrubbed the back of his wrist across his mouth. "Ugh… what?"

I dredged up a grin for him, despite the weariness congealed in my flesh.

"Hmm. I'm more awake than _you_ are, by the look of it."

He wrinkled his nose. "I'll have you know, madam, that it's been a very long day."

'Madam' made me snort with smothered laughter, but he had a point. We were all tired. I stooped back into my tent to retrieve my daggers and sword belt, along with a rag and a jar of gritty, greasy polish. Bodahn might not have had huge quantities of edible supplies, but we _had_ managed to stock up on all the most foul-smelling leather and metal cleansers… of course.

"Great minds think alike," Alistair observed, flourishing his own sword belt and the cloth tucked into his palm. "If we have to be up, might as well make use of the time, right?"

"True."

We settled ourselves by the fire, side-by-side, cross-legged on the ground, our movements small and our voices hushed so as not to wake anyone, and for a while we didn't speak much. The cold night air seemed blade-sharp, and the light breeze picking at the trees whetted itself on my cheeks in a strange and eerie mirroring of the motion my cloth made against my sword. Once the leaf litter was swept back a bit, the ground was a soft carpet of old, barely damp mud, moss, and pine needles. There were less comfortable things to be seated on, I supposed.

I stilled, and peered out into the darkness. We'd stoked the fire a little, but it was burning low, throwing a narrow pool of warm, flickering light to the ground at our feet… and the shadows seemed to swallow that whole. Pitch blackness threatened between the trees, and the sky was a tangled weave of dark clouds. I was never able to see well in the dark to start with—my elven eyes were against me—but I hated feeling so blind. I breathed in, trying to believe I could sense the forest the way we were meant to sense darkspawn… the way I _had_ , once before.

We were supposed to be able to do this, weren't we? Grey Wardens, sensing the darkspawn with our bitter gifts, feeling the darkness on the edge of the world. I exhaled slowly, and there were stirrings that spoke to me. Something hard to explain, like the soft silver of a fisherman's line cast deep into the darkness, welled from me and seemed to find its way into the night, reaching into the hidden places. I felt as if I could read the tremors in it, hear the whispers of all it touched and, slowly, I realised Alistair was watching me.

"All right?" he asked, as I glanced up guiltily, my stomach lurching.

"Mm-hm." I nodded, not really wanting to talk about something that, in all honesty, made me feel uncomfortable and faintly nauseous. I was reasonably sure that the idea of Grey Wardens' senses was meant to be a heroic ability, not the precursor to a bad migraine. I cleared my throat. "Like you said: long day. I'm just a bit bruised. You?"

Alistair smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Me? Oh, you know _me_. I bounce. I'm… fine. Still, it was weird, wasn't it?"

"What? Trees that—"

"Move. Yeah. I could manage quite happily without seeing _that_ again." He frowned, lowering the sword belt in his stain-smudged hands, and his fingers flexed as he seemed to think of reaching for my wrist. "When you ran back there, after Sten, I thought…."

"Don't," I murmured, because I didn't want to argue, or to have his fear shown to me.

I needed to believe Alistair was stronger than me, that he could do all the things I couldn't, and knew all the answers that I didn't. He stopped, though, his lips pressed into a tight line, and after a heartbeat of silence, he went back to industriously cleaning the leather.

_Oh, sod it._

I hadn't meant that I didn't want him to touch me. I did. I wanted the safe, complicated seclusion of his arms, and I wanted to kiss him, and… and I wanted to negotiate what came after that, whatever it might be.

We were nervous of each other, yes, but we were not truly afraid. I knew _I_ wasn't, anyway. Ever since Ostagar, I'd felt safer knowing I was with him… although I couldn't help but wonder what he thought. Alistair had lost so much there; it was hard to imagine I could be anything but a bad reminder of all the people who _hadn't_ survived. He'd never once thrown it back at me, though, so I supposed I might have been misjudging him. It was still often difficult for me to second-guess someone who, in so many ways, was so different to me, however familiar he'd come to seem.

"D'you still think about them?" I heard myself ask, and I blinked as the words slipped from my lips.

"Hm?" Alistair looked up from his polishing, the broad planes of his hands working over the leather without the need for concentration. "Who?"

"The others," I said quietly, wishing I'd had the sense to keep my mouth shut. "The other Wardens. I… I was just wondering, that's all… about how it was, back in Denerim."

"Oh." He smiled distantly. "Well, yes. 'Course I do. I told you, didn't I? They were a good bunch."

I nodded. An extended family. We'd talked of it a little before, at the Peak, when we'd left the darknesses of the order's old choices behind us, and I'd promised him we would do things a better, cleaner way. Alistair had needed calming then, and I'd done it as best I could. Now, I wanted to hear him talk because it staved off the night, and because the forest seemed so big. Dying here would be no different to Ostagar, I thought; just bones left to crumble in the mud, and the innumerable ranks of trees all around us, like the massed bodies of darkspawn.

I tried to blink that image away. It was too much like a dream bleeding over into reality, and I didn't want the pictures to cloud my eyes. I looked at Alistair, and fixed myself—full of tiredness and aching limbs and worn-out, crumpled fear, as I was—to the flecks of firelight in the muddied hazel of his eyes.

"…terribly well-equipped," he was saying, apparently giving me a running inventory of the compound as it had been when he was there. "And there was always a shortage of chairs, for some reason. But there _were_ a lot of tapestries. Big ones, with griffons and all kinds of heraldic stuff on them—great for keeping the draughts out. And, of course, it was right on the edge of the palace district, by the river, so every third morning the barge used to pass by from the brewery—The Two Tuns, with the red circles painted on the sign? Did you know it?"

I smiled thinly, remembering the smell of damp barley and sewage, and the dank, stale outpourings we used to get downriver. "Mm-hm. I know the sign. Had a cousin who worked there for a while."

"Did you? Well, we used to get all the beer from them. I think Duncan had some sort of arrangement. I mean, the bunkhouse wasn't that grand, but the old hall was full of carvings, and there was this huge fireplace…. There'd be these long tables, and we'd sit there after dinner. Drink, tell stories. Well… _they'd_ tell stories. I mostly listened." He grinned to himself as he worked a glob of polish into the sword belt. "There was this one time— well, you probably don't want to hear stories about men you didn't know."

The grin started to fade, and I shook my head.

"No, go on. I'd like to hear about them."

His cloth slowed on the leather, almost stilling completely, as if he was scared of frightening the memory away, like some rare bird. I watched him stare into nothingness, the shadows and the reflected firelight duelling in a complex pattern across his face.

"There was one Grey Warden who came all the way from the Anderfels. Grigor, his name was. He was a big, burly man with the biggest, fuzziest beard you've ever seen. And the man could _drink_ …!" Alistair winced, an echo of awe touching his eyes. "You know, he drank all the time but never got drunk. Finally we all made a pool to see just how many pints it would take to put him under the table."

I smiled. Sounded suspiciously like home and, for a moment, the ghosts of a wedding party that had never happened sang in my ears. Who knew? I might even have fitted in well among the Wardens.

"So?" I prompted, as Alistair continued to gaze into the distance, smiling absently and saying nothing. "How many did it take?"

"Hm?" He blinked, and glanced at me sheepishly. "Oh, we never did find out. Grigor said he'd drink a pint for every half-pint that the rest of us drank. He was still going by the time we were all passed out. I'm told that Duncan walked in later on and saw us all, passed out from one end of the hall to the other, and Grigor still drinking. Duncan laughed until he nearly… until…."

And then it all folded in on itself. All that wistful recollection, those fleetingly happy memories, touched with the indelible stain of one single, burning loss. Pain sluiced over Alistair's face, and his voice faded away to a dry, choked whisper. He blinked again, rapidly, and I saw how unguarded he'd been in that moment… how far down the walls had really come.

"I'm sorry," I murmured.

"Thought I was done with this," Alistair muttered, rubbing the back of his wrist across his face. "Sorry. Gets you by surprise sometimes."

He cleared his throat and shot me an apologetic look, yet it shocked me to see just how visible the dampness was in his eyes. Alistair was the first human I'd ever seen cry but, this time, he didn't even make an attempt to hide it. I watched as he rubbed roughly at his face with the heel of his palm, sniffed, and gave me a wet, wan little smile.

I reached out and laid my hand on his wrist. His skin was warm, bathed in the firelight that caught at the little golden hairs there… and humans did seem to sprout those in the strangest places. He looked at my fingers as if they were some sort of alien creature, and swallowed heavily.

"You're never done with grieving, Alistair," I said softly. "And you never _should_ be. But it gets easier. In time, you can remember the good things without the bad hurting so much."

His face softened, but a terse kind of disbelief lingered there. "Can you?"

He sounded lost, and my heart ached for him, so I tried to prove my point… perhaps not with the best example.

"Mm-hm. After my mother died, we barely spoke of her. It hurt too much. But, now, I can remember her as she was, and I know that she'll always live in the memories I have that don't— well, that aren't to do with how she died."

He looked inquisitively at me, the cloth and sword belt all but forgotten by his foot, just as I'd let my own task drop. My hand was still on his wrist, and I was very aware of the narrow sliver of space between us as he moved—so carefully, and so gently—to fold his fingers around mine. The feel of his thumb brushing my knuckles warmed me, and his voice was as low as the banked-up fire.

"What was she like? If, uh, I mean, if you don't mind—"

"I don't mind."

A small smile tugged at my mouth, and perhaps I was too eager to reassure him. Of course, it didn't surprise me that Alistair should be curious, and though I didn't want to taunt him with the happy memories of a loving home, part of me wanted to share my remembrances. For so long, Father had all but forbidden us from mentioning her name and yet—ever since I'd spoken with Leliana about her Fereldan ancestry—my mother had been in my thoughts.

"Her name was Adaia, and she was… lovely," I said, letting my gaze slide back to the fire and the thick crazing of pale ash through which the embers now slumbered, with a few dark flames licking at the remains of the wood. "A strong woman, but not a battleaxe. She was kind, and patient… most of the time, anyway. She had a temper, though—and a smart mouth. It used to get her into trouble in the alienage. She wasn't like a lot of the other women. I mean, she fitted _in_ —but I think she'd had to learn to do it, you know?"

Alistair said nothing, but he squeezed my fingers lightly, and my smile widened. For a moment, Mother flickered to life once more in the firelight, and I could almost hear the music of her warm laughter.

"She knew all kinds of things, though. She was clever. She taught me to read, and to do… figuring," I added tentatively, my pride in that rare elven attribute lessening a bit as I remembered Alistair's monastery education.

I might have been one of only a few children in our end of the ninth ward who could unravel the mysticism of letters and numbers but, compared to him, I might as well have stayed illiterate.

"Mother loved stories, though," I added, on slightly firmer ground, because stories weren't the same as reading. "She used to get books for me in the market sometimes, and we'd read them together… all those pictures, and… _words_. And, when she couldn't do that, she'd just say them instead—and she had stories about everything. About how the stars came to be there, or how the rivers started to run, and old tales, like _Dane and the Werewolf_ … only it was always a little different, every time she told it." I smiled at the memory, suddenly less grounded by the touch of Alistair's hand than the remembrance of Mother's rough apron, and her low voice weaving threads of magic through a warm, firelit evening. "Or the _really_ old stories… about Halamshiral, and the Emerald Knights, and… well… the Dalish."

It felt silly to say it, silly to admit that those we were searching for were part of the cherished fabric of my childhood. I wondered what Alistair thought I was hoping to find among them, and I glanced at him, expecting judgement in his face but finding only quiet, faintly melancholy interest.

"Did she know much about the Dalish?"

I shook my head. "Not more than anyone else, I don't think. Only stories. She certainly didn't have any Dalish blood, if that's what you're thinking. She was from the Free Marches originally, though she never really talked about it. I'm not sure where exactly, but I know she'd spent some time in service there."

My brow furrowed a bit as I realised how very little I did know… and that, now, I'd never learn anything more. Mother was gone, and Father was gone, and I was a speck of dust on the wind.

I sniffed, and pushed away this revolting tendency to feel so sorry for myself. No matter what had come to be, I'd been loved, and safe, and we'd had good times. I had to hold onto that in the face of everything else.

"She, um… she came to Denerim when she and my father were matched. I think it was hard for her to settle at first, but then I was born and, in time, they grew to love each other very much, so— What?"

Alistair looked perplexed, but he shook his head dismissively. "No. Sorry, no. Nothing. It's, well, it's just I always thought those two things went the other way around, that's all. Sorry. I remember how you explained about that, though. The, uh, the way your people, um…. The matches," he finished lamely, looking embarrassed.

 _My marriage_ , I thought bitterly. Yes, I'd explained about _that_ , hadn't I? And now here we were, our fingers intertwined before a fading fire.

"Yes." I cleared my throat, afraid that this sweet, calm quietness would suddenly start feeling awkward, and my grip on his hand tightened a little, as if I really believed I could hold him. I smiled mirthlessly at the dark grass, avoiding Alistair's eye. "No one ever said it was a _good_ system."

He chuckled dryly. "Oh, I don't know. Still, your mother and father were happy, right? So it worked for them."

I nodded, and glanced down at the heavily patched and somewhat greasy knees of my leather breeches. It all seemed surreal for a moment: sitting there amid the fallen leaves, with the wintry night caressing my cheeks, clutching at this small and tentative act of tenderness. My hand, and his, and his broad frame… and his knee, almost close enough to touch mine, and yet separated by that breath of space he'd left between us, which might either have been nerves or respect. I wasn't sure, but it was a distance I wanted to close, no matter the consequences.

Alistair was big, compared to me, and yet not terrifyingly so, and not as burly as some of the older, battle-hardened soldiers I'd seen at Ostagar, or Redcliffe. That in itself served to remind me of his youth… something so easy to forget, when my mind was busy burdening him with every panicked hope of greatness.

Was that what I wanted from this? A man to hide behind, to be my shelter and protection? I wondered. It was what I'd been brought up to expect, more or less. A woman's role was to keep a home, to be the helpmeet her husband needed and, Maker willing, the mother to his children. _That_ was where our value lay—our crowning achievement, and the thing that made us the precious jewels our menfolk would cherish and protect—and it was something that was no longer in my future.

Sitting there, the night's chill not quite reaching my bones, I think perhaps I was numb to other truths too… or perhaps I chose not to dwell on them.

Whatever the truth of it, I smiled shyly at Alistair when he tilted his head and peered curiously at me.

"Do you look like her?"

He seemed keen to know. Probably, I guessed, because the only sense of belonging to someone by blood _he'd_ ever had was an inconvenient, if somewhat watered-down, resemblance to Cailan, and presumably Maric himself.

I shrugged. "A little. She was very pretty, though. Delicate. Long, chestnut hair, skin like fresh cream—dark eyes. My eyes are like hers," I added, remembering with a smile the way Father used to tell me that, "but not as dark."

A gentle curve touched the corner of Alistair's lips as he squeezed my hand. "I think you have lovely eyes," he murmured, flushing slightly.

My smile widened, heat sluicing my cheeks, and I lowered my gaze.

Despite everything I wanted, it was hard to make that leap. I was a useless flirt and, tangled up in memories and insecurities, with the eyeless forest holding secrets in every shadow, I reached out for the thread of my tale, and clung to that.

"It was… difficult for Father after she died. He closed off for a while. I thought he was angry with her, but it wasn't that. Well, not just that. Even now— I mean," I corrected myself, with the burn of regret flashing behind my eyes, "before I left, he barely ever spoke of her. He just… didn't ever bring the matter up."

Alistair nodded slowly. The ripple of a breeze murmured through the trees and, for a moment, it sounded almost like footsteps stirring among the leaves. I looked up, but there was nothing to be seen. The moon's last shreds had sunk behind clouds once more, and the fire was a dully glowing mound. The sounds of quiet, guarded sleep came from the stand of tents around us, and I wondered briefly how many of the others were truly sleeping, or just laying there, trying to pretend they were at rest.

"How did she die?" Alistair asked, his voice a shallow ghost of a thing, as if he almost didn't want to hear the answer.

My back stiffened a little, though I'd known he'd ask the question. Part of me didn't want to tell him. This had been so nice, this bittersweet intimacy, and we felt so close that I didn't want to put anything between us.

"Sorry. If you'd rather not—"

"No, it's all right." I took a breath, and tasted wood smoke and dew on the air, together with the hints of grease and steel that I'd begun to find so comforting. "She was… uh… she was killed. By a guardsman, in the market."

"In Denerim?"

I didn't look at him. He was still holding my hand, and I felt the tension in his fingers. There was disbelief in his voice, like he really hadn't known it could happen.

Somehow, that didn't truly surprise me.

"Mm. She used to take work on the stalls, fetching and carrying for the traders. Just that once, some h— I mean, _somebody_ accused her of short-changing him or something, and she should've just admitted it, even if it wasn't her fault, and taken the switch but, like I said, she had a big mouth. She made a fuss, and the guard intervened." I shrugged, trying not to remember the day too clearly, to feel once more beneath my fingers the pitted metal bars across the outer gate of the alienage, quickly shut to stop the trouble spreading. "I wasn't there. I didn't see it, but… he hit her, she fell, and she came up fighting. You don't do that. You just… don't."

He let out an indignant breath, like a half-word of protest, and I shook my head. It had already happened. A good nine years ago now, and it couldn't be changed.

"Father was working in the palace district then. We got word later, and we had to go and get her, clean her up… take her to the paupers' fields," I said dully, remembering the coldness of my mother's skin beneath my fingers as I helped the hahren's sister lay the body out. It had seemed as if I'd never rid myself of that fleshly chill. "They, um… they burn them twice a week. More, if there's sickness in the city. It's not fancy, but it's respectable. Or near enough."

 _And yet she deserved so much more_.

Words to that effect had been one of the last things Father had said about my mother, as we stood with the few other families who'd come to the burning, watching the flames leap and gout. I remembered looking up at him, seeing the firelight reflected in the thin trails of tears on his cheeks, and feeling the world crack beneath me.

The alienage usually did funerals its own way. It wasn't normally as sparse as that—so few mourners, so little respect—but Mother had forfeited everything the moment she transgressed.

Just like me, I supposed.

"I'm so sorry, Meri," Alistair murmured. "I didn't know—"

Of course he didn't. And of course he _was_ sorry. He truly was, because that was him all over.

I sighed.

"The point is," I said wearily, "that you never _forget_ what happened. And you shouldn't, because it _did_ happen and—for my mother, and for Duncan, and for all those men who died at Ostagar—it wasn't right, or fair. But it can't rule you completely. If I'd given myself over to hating shems for what happened to Mother, or Shianni, I wouldn't be here now. You have to set that aside, and let time bring you the good memories… and make your life in the moment, your family in the people around you."

The words echoed roundly, and I saw the way he grinned, full of recognition and sheepish amusement overlaying a rawer sentiment, the dregs of which still hung between us.

"Huh. Wynne gave you that speech too, did she?"

I smiled. "Yeah. Guess I'm getting some use out of it, though."

Alistair snorted, and his amusement was contagious. It should have seemed wrong, I suppose, to move so quickly from the story of my mother's death to sharing stifled, childish giggles… but it didn't.

It felt natural, just as it did when Alistair took his hand from mine, and wrapped his arm around my shoulders, drawing me close with a playful roughness that belied his tenderness, and pressing a kiss to the top of my head. My arms slid around him, the two of us suddenly locked in a comfortably awkward seated hug.

We stayed that way for a while, his mouth and his measured breaths warming my scalp, with me cleaving to him like damp on cheap plaster.

Overhead, the clouds were beginning to lift, and the night had begun to thin, bringing us closer to the promise of dawn… and the task of finding our way back out of the forest.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, the Brecilian Forest holds more surprises than Meri expected... or hoped for. _Please feel free to correct my Elvish, if you’re so moved. :)_

We started early, well before dawn, and the dew hung on the trees like a film of wet ice, unmoving in the damp, stagnant air. 

Everything seemed so awfully quiet. That was the worst thing. We were all tired and prickly after an uncomfortable night, and though at the time it had seemed such safe intimacy, that morning I felt exposed by having talked so much. 

The greater part of it was probably the fact we were admitting failure. We were picking our way out of the forest, tails between our legs, maintaining a fiction of keeping a weather eye out for the Dalish as we moved, yet in truth thinking of nothing more than getting as far away from that place as we could. 

We’d discussed it as we pulled up camp, although in the most cursory of manners. Sten’s disapproval had radiated over things like a heat haze, and he’d grunted out a few choice phrases about ‘abandoning all resolve at the first obstacle’, but I’d been surprised to find that the others were largely behind me. Morrigan affected smugness, reminding me she’d _said_ the forest was full of hidden dangers, while even Wynne agreed that, if continuing the search for the Dalish took us deeper into places so very full of demons then, as turned around as we already were, it was unlikely we’d ever get out alive, much less as quickly as we wanted to. 

Zevran was my staunchest supporter. He took it all in stride and, with a cheerful smile, clapped me on the shoulder as he strolled past, pack in hand, and said it was ‘better to cut one’s losses while one is still holding the knife’. 

Leliana put on a polite show of agreement, but appeared to be very crestfallen. I wasn’t sure how far it was disappointment in my decision, or discomfort at not feeling secure enough in her own position to argue with me. Either way, I was frankly just grateful nobody made a scene. 

My mood was already pitching towards my boots. I felt like a traitor, and a coward, and all number of other uncomplimentary things, and I couldn’t even summon up any enthusiasm for the idea that I was making this choice because it was right… because it safeguarded these people for whom I felt responsible, and because—a solid three weeks’ journey to the west, near enough—there was a man who lay dying and needed our help. 

Given those thoughts of Arl Eamon, Alistair’s silence on the matter of leaving the forest was telling. All he said was ‘if you think that’s best’, and he didn’t even meet my eye when he said it. Part of me felt mildly hoodwinked, like somehow he’d got his way without even having to try and convince me… and I resented that, though I didn’t want to blame him for it. Maybe he disagreed; I had no way of knowing, and I didn’t want to ask. 

All in all, none of it made for a good atmosphere as we trudged through the damp brush, with the canopy’s dusty, filtered light spilling slow streaks of sunshine onto our backs. 

We were silent, and morose, and there was a slight tang of fear on the air. Maethor padded close to me, ignoring even the tell-tale skitter of squirrels in the trees, and his stumpy little tail was clamped right down, ears flat to his skull and nose quivering as he snuffed noisily at the air. 

By the time the sun was properly up, it felt like we’d been walking for hours, and I was sure I’d seen the same tree root three times already. 

We were meant to be arcing south-west, in a general sort of theory; avoiding the area where we’d encountered the dyads before, but shaving off a little time by not back-tracking towards the north. It was Morrigan’s route, which naturally roused the normal kind of back-biting between her and Alistair. 

“I don’t see why you couldn’t just fly over and—”

“Ugh, not this again….” She rolled her eyes, stabbing her staff savagely into the soft ground with every step. “How many times must I try to drive information into that pumpkin you call a head? What need do I have to see again what I have already _seen_? This is the route. Believe me or do not; I no longer care.”

“Could’ve flown over and looked for the Dalish, then,” he muttered darkly. “Might’ve found them from the air.” 

Morrigan gave a frustrated growl. “Fool. You think they would leave themselves so easily visible? Had we more time, perhaps I could spend days hopping from branch to branch, inspecting the woods for clues… but it seems we do not possess such luxuries.”

There was a moment’s lull in the sniping, filled with the mismatched clumps of footfalls. I wondered if what she said was true, or merely a defence for the fact she couldn’t sustain the form of the bird for as long as it would have taken either to lead us out of the forest, or search the trees for the Dalish. I wasn’t sure, but there was no way I was going to wade into the argument, so I kept my mouth firmly shut. 

Alistair scowled at the witch. 

“My head doesn’t look anything _like_ a pumpkin,” he said indignantly, the insult having apparently just filtered through, at which she bared her teeth, but apparently felt no need to make further comment. 

She still didn’t seem quite herself, I thought. I’d been putting it down to tiredness, and there _had_ been a change in her when she got near the forest… the way a dog grows fidgety close to home. All the same, I couldn’t help worrying a little. I thought back to Soldier’s Peak, and the uncharitable part of me was frightened at someone with Morrigan’s ruthless acquisitiveness coming in such close contact with a creature like Avernus, not to mention all the dark knowledge he’d left behind. 

We should have burned all of it, I supposed. Archives and everything, and yet I believed so firmly that we’d need them. It was the first thing I wanted to do, as soon as we got near Lake Calenhad; send word to the mages, and have people who understood things like that go and deal with it. I suppose I wanted to think there’d be some secret answer buried there, as if the Blight was no more than a riddle and, somehow, all those past generations of Wardens would have left us the key. 

I told myself that was stupid… as was my worry over Morrigan. Not trusting her completely was one thing, but I wasn’t as paranoid about her as Alistair. Besides, she’d been so badly hurt. She’d had no opportunity to learn from the blood magic Avernus had been using, and we’d certainly seen her use none of her own, whatever Alistair liked to mutter about maleficarum. 

So, we trudged on, and the overbearing silence made it too easy for me to dwell on the fact we weren’t going to find the Dalish. Worse, that we were abandoning the hope of it—that _I_ was abandoning the very idea of them—and that was a horrible feeling. The memories of childhood stories refused to let me go, filling my mind with wisps of tales and half-recalled gossip. Leaves crunched and scuffled beneath our feet, and the weak threads of the sun trickled through the fringes of red, gold, and greenish-brown foliage still clinging to the trees, while the great feathered boughs of pines and firs ate up all the rest of the light. 

At one point, I thought I saw another Dalish arrowhead lying in the brush, but it turned out to be a stone. No one laughed at my mistake. 

We traipsed on and, ahead of me, Zevran was peering up at the trees as he walked, the weak sun glimmering on his hair, but it wasn’t the idle speculation of a man enjoying the scenery. He was watching everything, taking note of every detail… almost as if he was aware of something I wasn’t. 

I wanted to ask him what he could see but, on top of the misidentified arrowhead, I didn’t really wish to make myself look like even more of an idiot.

Overhead, the trees rustled, but no birds cawed. We’d seen very few of them since entering the forest; I suspected horrible things happened to anything living that went too near some of the trees. 

Maethor huffed softly to himself and cocked a leg against a stand of ragged grass. I watched him, noting the tension in that wide, muscular body, even in the act of relieving his bladder, and realised he was just as wary as Zevran. 

There was something out there, definitely. I looked to Leliana, unsurprised to find her gentle tranquillity barely masking a keen alertness, those glass-clear eyes fixed intently on the trees ahead of us. Even Alistair had started to look fidgety, and Morrigan had developed a certain degree of stiffness in her stride. I glanced over my shoulder, reaffirming my knowledge of where everyone was, just in case we were suddenly called on to draw weapons. 

“I don’t think we’re alone,” Leliana said softly, her brows drawing into a frown. “D’you think…?”

Up ahead, the trees were not so much thicker as older: a stand of great, knotted trunks and branches, many grizzled with late autumn leaves turning rotten on the bough, and others heavy with the fronds of dank, dark needles. The way seemed uncomfortable, if not impassable, and I peered to either side of us, hoping for an easier route. 

“ _Brasca_ ,” Zevran muttered, his body already beginning to drop into a loose-limbed, predatory crouch. 

My fingers twitched towards my daggers as, at my heel, Maethor loosed a low rumble. 

“Oh, sod,” Alistair said, reaching for his sword. “There’s not going to be more demons, are there? I could really get sick of demons.” 

Something rustled in the trees ahead, but I could see nothing. Just the oddly dappled light coming through the leaves… like this was some pleasant, sunlit grove, and death wasn’t awaiting us in every shadow.

Maethor lunged forwards, paws skittering on the dry leaves, and barked angrily. 

“You are in luck, then,” Zevran said, raising his voice a little. “There are no demons here, Alistair. Just ghosts.”

He straightened up, his hands relaxing, and I didn’t understand why he’d dropped his guard. I turned, ready to ask what in the Maker’s name he thought he was doing, but then it became extremely, pointedly, clear. 

Three elves emerged from the trees ahead of us, melting from the shadows as if they were made of them… and they were all armed. 

Two carried tall, slender bows, and the arrows that were already nocked and trained on us bore familiar flint tips. The third was a woman, tall and athletic, her face marked with a dark and complex pattern of lines, like paint or ink traced over her skin. She too had a bow across her back, but carried in her hand a long, wicked-looking blade, curved like a fang, with a cloth-wrapped hilt. She held it low, but there was no mistaking the threat, or the hard, violent distrust in her face as she stared at us. 

“They have been following us for some time,” Zevran murmured, as Maethor grumbled, low in his chest, and pressed protectively against my leg. “They were either waiting to see what we would do, or they wanted us out of the forest.”

The woman scowled at him, and made a sharp gesture with her left hand. 

“ _Dar’then,_ ” she snapped, presumably addressing the men with her, for they moved to flank us, slowly sidestepping foot-over-foot, soft-shod in low-cut leather boots, and yet their aim never wavered. 

At Ostagar, I’d watched men practicing at the butts. I’d even learned to fire a crossbow, but I’d never seen any archer who looked as coolly assured and, frankly, bloody terrifying as this. There was no doubting that one of those cruel, flint-tipped arrows—slim though they might be—could end any of us in under a second, and there was something about the way the elves moved, with that cat-like, unhurried grace, that was truly frightening. 

We outnumbered them almost three to one, yet they weren’t worried. If anything, they seemed affronted at the very fact of our presence. I wondered why they’d revealed themselves at all. Why not wait until we left the woods? Were we really that far off target? Maybe they’d grown tired of waiting, and just decided to kill us now.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the way Zevran was standing: straight, yet relaxed, his head held up but his gaze fixed on the trees, not the woman giving the orders, and his hands well away from his more obvious weapons. It seemed sensible to follow suite, so I did, and gradually the others mirrored my movement. Even Maethor, sticking close to my heel, and deathly quiet in the way that he always was just before he decided to attack, eased his posture slightly. 

We stood, silent, and time seemed to slow to the pace of treacle. I tried to keep my breathing in check, but as the three elves stared at us, and the woman who led them began to step forwards, one thought and one thought only beat over and over in my head. 

_They are Dalish. Real, live Dalish. Really real Dalish elves…._

Common sense forgotten, my heart pounded, every thud of it in my chest echoing until my head swam and my blood fizzed. We’d found them. We’d really found them. Or, perhaps, they’d found us… but the details didn’t matter, did they? Even as we’d thought we were leaving every chance of it behind, here they were— and they were _real_. 

The moment stretched out, growing taut and thin, but I didn’t care. I’d tried to follow Zev’s example and not make eye contact, but I couldn’t keep from looking at them. 

They were not, to put it lightly, what I had imagined they would be. 

All three wore leather armour, but of a kind unlike anything I’d ever seen. The hides were dyed, for a start, all in tones of dark green and russet, and every inch of leather was embossed or decorated with intricate, swirling designs. The men wore brigandines cut low on the neck, but that reached to mid-thigh, with dark, rough shirts beneath, and heavy belts about their waists, no doubt bristling with other weaponry. The woman’s armour was of a slightly different style; high-necked, with a heavier chestpiece that bore what looked like the shape of a great tree, picked out in scrolled lines and curves. Her breeches were thick, her boots high and lashed with heavy shin-guards, and a skirt of leather plackets and knotted cords fringed the bottom of her jack, while a wide leather belt at her hips held at least one more blade. 

Her pale brown hair was swept up into a short, sleek tail at the crown of her head, highlighting cheekbones sharp as razors, and long, finely tapered ears. As she drew closer, as if prowling forwards to inspect a kill, I could see more clearly the strange lines that crossed her features. They were tattoos: thick, black curves and angular patterns that, like Zevran’s marks, hugged the outlines of her face, and yet almost made another skin on top of it. I tried to follow the lines, but I got lost amongst them. They went everywhere… arcing over her forehead, her cheeks, and even down her jaw, towards her neck. I didn’t know much about how the things were applied, but it must have been agonising. 

As I stared, her gaze met mine, and the breath was wrung from me completely. 

Oh, I had seen plenty of stunning eyes before. Lots of girls in the alienage had possessed what shemlen men liked to call ‘elven eyes’; those pale and shimmering hues of green, amber, or lavender that they seemed to find so appealing. I’d even grown used to Morrigan’s golden stare, and Sten’s disturbingly bright gaze. 

Nevertheless, I was not prepared for the sheer brilliance of the Dalish woman’s eyes. They were light grey, almost ghostly, with pupils black as buttons, and they bit into me like blades, so full of challenge and anger. 

Her thin lips parted, and she made a small noise in the back of her throat, her gaze leaving mine to survey those I stood with. Her grip tightened on that wicked blade, and she took a step nearer, her shoulders squared. 

She was taller than me—almost of human height, as were the men with her, I thought, thought it was harder to tell while they were busy aiming arrows at our heads. One of the archers was blond, his skin reddened and wind-chapped, his long hair twisted into a rough knot at the back of his neck. The other had dark hair, bound into dozens of tiny locks and plaits, and loosely pinned behind his ears. They both had those markings on their faces too, but the patterns weren’t alike. I guessed they represented something, but I had no idea what. Clans? Families, maybe? 

I thought I should say something—explain we meant no harm, perhaps—but my tongue felt thick and dry, and my head was buzzing. It didn’t seem real. None of it seemed real. I swallowed heavily. 

“Um… er, we—”

“ _Halam_!” 

I didn’t know what that meant, but ‘stop talking’ seemed a reasonable translation. My mouth snapped shut, and the Dalish woman glared at me. 

“ _Hamin,_ Mithra,” said the blond-haired archer, without breaking his aim. 

She glanced at him, and a rapid exchange in Elvish followed, ending with her glowering at me—and the rest of my companions—before she stepped back abruptly, and gave a stiff nod of her head. 

“You are outsiders,” she said, and her heavily accented words were crisp but uneven, as if she wasn’t comfortable speaking the common tongue. “Why are you here?”

That pale, uncompromising gaze roved over us all, and I knew I should speak. I should press myself forwards, declare our business and maybe mention the treaties, and—

“We have been seeking the Dalish,” Zevran said smoothly, his voice rolling with that honeyed tone of persuasiveness he could use so well. “We are honoured you allow us this meeting.”

The woman sneered. “And why should we not kill you, _vir’din_?”

“Because you have been tracking us, no?” Zevran smiled at her, which I imagined—from the woman’s expression—was not something that happened often when she had archers pointing their weapons at people. “My companions and I seek an audience with your Keeper. This is all we ask. No harm. Just words. These two,” he added, indicating Alistair and me with a nod of his head, “are Grey Wardens.”

That earned me another glare. Not Alistair, however, I noticed. The elf seemed adept at completely ignoring him… as well as every other human present, not to mention Sten, which was quite a feat in itself. 

“This is true?” she demanded. 

I nodded, and finally found my voice. “Y-Yes. We are. There’s, uh, there’s a Blight. A horde of darkspawn massing in the south. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but the king’s army fell. We need allies, if we’ve any hope of stopping this.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she moved closer to me. The smell of leather and skins, mixed with the smell of the forest—that dark, pine-sour earthiness—filled my nostrils, and brought with it other scents. There was the sharpness of wood smoke, as if the camp these three had come from wasn’t far, and a rich, sharp aroma, like perfume or resin, seemed to blend with it. I couldn’t be sure if it was rising off the leather of her armour, or her skin itself. I blinked and, unable to hold her gaze, let my eyes fall to the hide thong she wore at her throat. A small group of beads had been threaded upon it; carved bone, painted wood, and something that looked like a shell. I thought of the string of shells hanging in Alarith’s shop, hanging like bleached teeth in the shadows, up amongst the rafters and clutter of his goods, and I wondered if people like this really _did_ save people like him. 

Were the Dalish very different if you encountered them by accident, as a waif or a wandering stray? I supposed we didn’t exactly look harmless, blundering about the woods with our armour and weapons. They’d have plenty of reason to be wary of us.

“Not our concern,” the woman said eventually, rolling the words around her mouth before practically spitting them at me. “Run back to your shemlen nobles and tell them the Dalish do not care.”

“They’re not _my_ nobles,” I said, more quickly and more hotly than I should have done. 

She narrowed her eyes and snorted dismissively. “You may be of my kind, outsider, but you are not  _elvhen_ . Flat-ears such as yourself are little different to the shemlen.”

Something inside me shrivelled a little at the venom in her voice. I stared at her in disbelief too enormous to be tainted with anger, and yet my palm itched for the welcome weight of my sword hilt against it. I wanted blood and vengeance for those words, but I also wanted to run away and hide from them. I’d seen the look she was giving me often enough before; always on the faces of old women in the alienage when a girl walked by in gathered skirts, dressed like a shem’s tart. 

That wasn’t true, and it wasn’t _fair_ … and it still made rage and humiliation boil in me. I met her gaze, and bit down on my tongue so hard that I tasted blood. 

“If you already know of the Blight,” I said levelly, willing myself not to flinch at those wild grey eyes, “then you know it’s not about shems or elves. If the horde makes it up the valley, we _all_ die. Now, I don’t stand here for anyone but the Grey Wardens, and it is as a Warden I tell you we have treaties the Dalish signed four ages ago. We want to know if you will honour them or not. So, will you let us speak with your leader?”

Her nostrils flared, and a positively murderous look flickered across her face, buried under all those dark lines. Behind me, I heard Sten shifting slightly, the gentle clink of his armour unmistakeable. 

I prayed to the Maker, and Andraste—and any other gods who might possibly be around to hear me—that this wouldn’t end up in a fight. The difficult, lumpy silence stretched out, and for a little while violence felt inevitable. My back prickled, and sweat dampened the base of my spine. I didn’t move, didn’t blink and, finally, the Dalish woman stepped back, her head snapping up with the air of command. 

“Huh.” She addressed me, but her eyes were scanning my companions, her expression tight and, while not precisely neutral, giving little away. “A Grey Warden. This is not a lie many would attempt. Fewer still would question the honour of the _elvhen_. But… we will bring you to the Keeper, as you ask.”

I tried to hold back my breath of relief, but as I opened my mouth to thank her, she cut straight across me.

“Come.” She glanced back at the two archers and nodded, before gesturing us to follow. “We go. You will follow. When we reach the camp, you will keep your hands to yourselves. You will touch nothing, and you will know there are arrows upon you, outsiders. _Always_.”

As she said it, the men behind her lowered their bows, but I got the distinct impression she didn’t mean them. I glanced into the trees, suddenly much less nervous than I had been about demons, and more concerned by the possibility of unseen archers. 

The woman turned abruptly and stalked off through the trees. The archers were hanging back, waiting for us to follow her, no doubt so they could bring up the rear, and so there seemed little else to do. 

Zevran glanced at me with a slight nod of his head, a small smile curving the edge of his lips, and then fell seamlessly, confidently into step behind her. I looked to the others, noting Morrigan’s tight-lipped displeasure—she really did loathe being treated like that, no matter whether she was at arrow-point or not—and Wynne’s guarded expression. Leliana was watching the elves’ every movement, and she inclined her head respectfully at the blond archer as she passed him, falling in behind Zevran. He didn’t acknowledge the gesture, though his gaze followed her minutely. 

I caught Alistair’s eye for the briefest of moments before we moved on. It would have been nice to draw some comfort from that, but he looked nervous and ruffled, and the choked sort of half-smile he shot me wasn’t very reassuring. 

_**~o~O~o~** _

We followed the three Dalish through the forest for what felt like miles. Or, more accurately: we were _accompanied_ … with extreme attentiveness and caution. It felt almost as if we were captives; a sensation I quickly dismissed, because this had been exactly the thing we’d wanted. We’d been _trying_ to find them, and one can’t be a captive if one is being taken to where one wants to go—or so I told myself repeatedly on that long walk.

In any case, they had not been as aggressive as, say, Brother Genitivi’s _Travels_ had made out. Not really, anyway. 

“Your name?” the dark-haired archer asked me as we walked. 

He was just behind my shoulder, padding along almost soundlessly, and I’d not been expecting him to speak. When he did, it made me jump, and I was suddenly very aware both of his proximity and his strangeness. His words, like the woman’s, were wreathed in a heavy accent, and he frowned when I didn’t reply, presumably thinking he’d mispronounced something. He tried again. 

“ _Emma_ Revasir,” he said slowly, putting one weatherworn hand to his chest. He pointed across to the blond archer, and then to the woman. “Aegan. Mithra. What is your name?”

I blinked. He wasn’t dirty—less dirty than me, given how long we’d been on the road—but the skin of his hands was like wood-grain, traced with ground-in soil and roughness. Even so, as I looked more carefully at him, I could see that beneath the tattoos his face was that of a young, albeit hard-worn, man: narrow cheeks, high forehead and wide ears, and a long nose and chin. The freshness of his skin had been chapped by wind and sun—though less noticeably than the other, fairer man, the one he called Aegan—and his eyes were a murky, greyish blue. 

“Merien,” I said, and he tilted his head to the side, as if trying out the unfamiliar sound in his mind. 

He looked fleetingly confused, but covered it well, and even managed to smile more or less politely at me as he nodded, his attention drifting to Maethor, who was padding warily at my side. 

“The hound,” Revasir said, pointing at the mabari. “Is yours?”

I nodded. “Yes. Well, mabari choose their owners, or so I was told. He… found me.”

Maethor clearly knew he was being spoken of; he looked up and wagged his tail tentatively, liquid brown gaze flicking between me and the archer. 

“I-I gave him an elven name,” I said, in the spirit of fostering some kind of camaraderie. “He is called ‘Maethor’. You know… ‘warrior’? I thought it was right.”

Revasir had been looking down at the dog in studied admiration, but at that he smirked, and gave a short cough of laughter. Over to my left, the blond archer snorted, and Mithra glanced back sharply. 

Confused, I looked for an explanation, and Revasir shook his head, sending the little braids and fuzzy locks in his loosely pinned cascade of hair quivering. A few of them had beads and trinkets plaited into them but, as he carefully explained the reason for his mirth, I stopped noticing details. 

“That word? It does not mean what you think it means. Is….” He waved one sunburned hand, evidently searching for the right term. “Stick? One who… wields stick,” he said, making a swinging motion through the air with his arm, and nodding. “Yes. Like a child. Play.”

“Oh.”

I didn’t know what else to say. The dull warmth of a blush threatened my cheeks, but the chill in the air—and the numbing embarrassment I felt cresting up over me in a great, silent wall—seemed to hold it off. I stared down at the dog, and focused on the myriad of little patterns in the mud-streaked brindle of his coat. Maethor looked up at me, his eyes questioning, and that wrinkled muzzle puffed out hot coils of damp breath, a string of drool hanging from his baggy lips. I wriggled my fingers gently, and he butted his head against my hand, so I could scratch his ears as we walked. 

_**~o~O~o~** _

My first sight of the Dalish camp took my breath away; I can’t deny that. 

Mithra and her scouts had led us on an exhaustively opaque route, picking through the dark and twisted channels between moss-layered trees, every new turn another challenge to what little sense of direction I had left. I suspected Morrigan had been able to keep better track than me, though I didn’t draw attention to the question by looking at her. We all walked in silence, mute and meek, and I felt as if I was stumbling through a dream. 

When we finally arrived, it was like stepping through a curtain and into another world. The trees stood as numinous sentinels, their heavy, dank branches an interlocking wall of green. Either there were no demons in this part of the forest, or the Dalish had a talent for avoiding them. Given how uneventful our escorted trip had been, I suspected the latter. 

Mithra ducked between the thin, clawed twigs and prickly needles, and barked out a warning to watch our steps. I looked down as my boots skidded a bit on the leaves and pebbles, and found we were descending a ridge. I hadn’t even known there was a hill _here_ … and yet we must have been climbing one side of it. The ground sloped sharply away and, coming through the trees, we were faced with a whole new vista laid out below us. 

I suppose I’d expected something mean and muddy, with the same ragged kind of comforts as we made for ourselves when we stopped for the night. Naturally, the wild elves had far more style. 

Below us, the thickets broadened out into a wide clearing, peppered with a few tall trees—those ancient, rigidly straight guardians of the forest, as I thought of them. The sound of running water bubbled close by, and around the clearing itself stood several large shapes that, at first, I mistook for tents. They stretched up against the trees, broad canvas blanks like sails… but then I saw that, below those wide swathes of cloth—some in red, others grey, and others still bright, vibrant greens—they had wheels, and bodies like wagons. They were big, broad things, and how they could move through the forest perplexed me, especially when they clearly had shafts, yet I saw no horses to draw them. 

There were tents too, as well as the wagons; large and small structures tossed up over temporary wooden frames, with low fires burning like jewels before them. Thin coils of bluish-grey smoke curled on the air—and before Maethor almost skidded into the back of my leg, nearly knocking me down the slippery, treacherous ridge—I’d counted more than a dozen tents and wagons combined. 

The hound looked up at me apologetically, and loosed a huffy little whine through his jowls as I steadied myself with a hand on the top of his head. 

“It’s all right,” I murmured, which earned me a quick wag of his stumpy tail… though I wasn’t sure whose benefit I was really saying it for. 

As we edged our way down the ridge, the smells of the camp rose to greet me, and they were immensely comforting. The tang of leather and canvas met the acrid perfume of wood smoke, with the earthy undertones of the forest swelling in all around. Somewhere, something was cooking… probably broth or stew. Down below, among the tents and the wagons with those strange canvas sails, I could see other people moving about—other _elves._ And they were Dalish: a true, live, real people, here before me instead of hiding in whispers and stories. Many bore those peculiar tattoos on their faces, from what I could see, but not all of them, and though some were dressed in the same intricate leather garb as the three who’d brought us here, several of the crowd that was beginning to gather wore more simple arrays of cloth and fur. 

None of them looked particularly welcoming. I saw a small boy run out from behind one of the wagons, then stop and stare up at us. The expression on his face changed and, even at the distance at which I was standing, I could quite clearly see the way his body straightened, his brows drawing low and his chin jutting out. No intimidated or frightened child, this; his was a look of unveiled and indignant hatred. Who were we, and how dare we set foot here? As we reached the bottom of the incline, a woman in a green dress, her face criss-crossed with tattoos, came forwards to lay a hand on his shoulder and draw him away. 

Mithra turned and glared at us. “You will wait here. We shall see if the Keeper will receive you.”

She strode away from us without a backward glance, the two archers following, and they headed for the largest of the wagons, which seemed to be at the centre of the camp. Beyond it lay a couple of large, long tents, but I could see little else past the gathering knots of elves who’d emerged to stare at us. 

“D’you think they’re going to wait ’til later to lynch us?” Alistair queried through gritted teeth, his voice a low whisper. “Or will they want the mess over with before supper?”

I turned my head enough to glance sidelong at him. “I have no idea. Maybe it’ll be the evening’s entertainment.”

He winced. Zevran shot me a brief look, his face a mask of good-natured neutrality. 

“Just do not make eye contact, hmm? And do not allow yourself to appear too subdued. A show of respect, they like. A show of inferiority, and… well, you’re on your own.”

He said it while barely moving his lips, a slim glimmer in those amber eyes the only indication that he might have been as nervous as the rest of us. I peered over my shoulder at the others, torn between pride and envy for the way they were holding themselves. Wynne was a model of quiet and steely grace, Morrigan her usual prickly self, and Sten an impassively monolithic presence, despite how uncomfortable I suspected this place made him. Leliana, like Zevran, was able to make her face blank, but those sharp eyes of hers were always on the move, taking in every tiny detail. She didn’t seem fazed by anything in the camp, no matter how strange it appeared to me, and I wondered if she too had some greater familiarity with the Dalish than I knew of. 

On that point, I narrowed my eyes as I looked back at Zev. 

“If you know so much, perhaps you’d care to deal with this yourself?”

The hint of a smile flickered at the edge of his lips as he turned his head back to the wider clearing, his hands clasped primly in front of him. 

“Ah, but _I_ am not the Grey Warden here, o most beguiling one.”

“You’ll be the only one here with one eye in a minute,” I muttered darkly, but he just stared straight ahead, the slight crease at the corner of his mouth suggesting a vein of amusement.

His smugness infuriated me, though of course he’d been the one to warn me we shouldn’t expect welcome banners and free slices of pound cake. I contented myself with glowering quietly, and then trying to put forth as proud and respectable a face as I could. 

Across the clearing—an expanse of ground left bare between us, the forest floor darkly rich and silty—the Dalish gathered, and they watched us in silence. As Zevran had said, I avoided meeting anyone’s gaze, but I was drawn to looking at them as a moth can’t help but dance with a flame. 

Back home, we’d get a couple of lads a year who might decide to run off and find the clans or—every so often—decide that they were already as good as Dalish. I remembered one boy, six years or so older than me, who used to paint his face in swirls and squiggles and shout a lot about freedom from oppression. It never seemed to get him far, and he was usually drunk. Eventually, he got married off to somewhere in the Free Marches, and people said he was lucky to have survived long enough to see his wedding. 

These people were nothing like that… nothing like anything I’d pictured. They were tall, proud, beautiful, and fierce, with their wild hair and their ink-stained flesh, and their leathers, furs, and cloth all dyed in greens and purples, blues and russets. They were like the blooms that crept between the roots of trees: secret wonders that hid within the forest’s heart. 

And they just stood there, watching us. 

The tension was practically palpable, and I was extremely glad when Maethor did a little to break it by sitting down beside me with a leaf-rustling thump and having a damn good scratch. 

Finally, Mithra emerged from the wagon. She strode back towards us, flanked by Aegan and Revasir, and her face was full of thunder. 

Several of the other elves watched as she bore down on us, and one or two murmured to each other behind their hands. She stopped a few feet in front of me, her entire body almost quivering with barely suppressed displeasure. 

“The Keeper wishes to speak with you,” she said, the words ‘for some reason I cannot fathom’ trailing, unspoken. “You will show him respect.”

“Thank you.” I nodded, formulaic and old-fashioned words coming back to me from a long-ago lifetime of cobbled streets and po-faced elders. “You do us honour by your generosity. We welcome that most humbly.”

I meant well by it, but she looked at me like I was a babbling child, and gestured brusquely to the wagon, and the fire before it. 

“Come.”

At first, I wasn’t sure if we were all meant to accompany her or not, but I was comforted a little by the way the others started to move with me, as if quietly, politely iterating that—while we would respect the wild elves’ ways—we would neither be parted nor controlled. 

I shot a glance at Alistair as we crossed the clearing, the crowd of onlookers peeling back from us like steam spilling from a kettle. He grimaced at me, his back tense and his steps uncertain.

As we neared the wagon, close enough for the heat of the fire before it to spill out in waves—reminding me painfully of just how cold I was—the curtain hanging over the wagon’s open door twitched, and a figure emerged from within. 

He was an old man, older than our hahren, wrapped in a thick, dark green woollen cloak and clinging to a large, heavy staff for support. Long, thin hands with raised veins on their backs, like mottled blue rivers against brown, leathery skin, ended in the knotted curls of fingers, crabbed with age and swollen joints. He should have looked frail… and he would have done, but for the gaunt, dark-shadowed face that topped his hunched, cloth-swathed frame. 

His cheeks were sunken, his mouth a thin and withered line, with deep troughs gouged from its corners to his nose, which soared in a high, thin sickle over a narrow, angular profile. I wasn’t surprised to see the tattoos on his face: faded curves and sweeps of dark brown, blue, and green that formed knots and whorls on his cheeks, chin, and forehead, and thin lines that bisected the areas of skin in between. His head had been shaved—something I’d never seen on an elf before, excepting cases of ringworm or really bad lice, or the rare occasion a girl who’d made some questionable choices got herself caught by a group of her peers who didn’t approve of whores. That strange juxtaposition jarred me, as did the inexplicable sense of nervous anticipation I felt as I stared at the elf’s face, and the pale green eyes that seemed to shimmer as his gaze flicked over us. 

Mithra bowed low as she spoke to him, her voice for once devoid of all that challenge and hardness. Though I didn’t understand what she said, I gathered she was presenting as ‘the outsiders’, and probably indicating her discomfort with our presence. 

He held up a hand, the folds of his cloak shifting a little as he let them go, and I caught a glimpse of layers of cloth beneath, evidently protection for an old man’s weakness against the cold. He stopped on the middle step of the wagon and surveyed us and, when he spoke, his voice was soft, with just a hint of age’s rasp to its warm, rounded tone. 

“ _Ma serennas_ , Mithra,” he said, looking steadily at her. “You did right. Now you may return to your post.”

It surprised me to hear him address her in the common tongue, and with much less trace of an accent than I’d heard so far. I supposed he was demonstrating his command of the language, so we knew he spoke and understood it. Only later would I learn how little Elvish the Dalish truly possessed. 

“ _Ma nuvenin_ , Keeper.” She bowed again, but she gave me a look filled with deep distrust as she left the fireside, the archers following on behind. 

I was aware of the splintered crowd lingering beyond the fire. They were still watching, albeit from a distance. I imagined they held their elder in high enough regard that, if any one of us should so much as look at him the wrong way, we wouldn’t leave this place in one piece. I took a slow breath, watching the firelight dance against the high sides of the Keeper’s wagon—a huge thing, with a prow like a ship, and the same kinds of strange lines and curves I saw everywhere here, painted in twirling arabesques over its notched wooden planks—and tried to summon the courage to meet the man’s eye.

He descended the last few steps slowly, his leather-shod feet almost soundless, but his staff knocking hollowly on the wood. I couldn’t help feeling the impression of frailty was a shallow one; I was too used to the tough, unflappable elders of the alienage, marinated in their own hardship until the only thing that seemed to kill them off was a momentary lapse of concentration. Besides, I’d have had to be blind to miss the glyphs and runes etched into that staff. Was he a mage? That thought was strange to me, too. Did the Dalish have magic? _Elven_ magic? It was possible, I supposed. There were no templars out here to snatch children with the curse off to the Circle, and maybe that meant they didn’t grow up fearing it as we had. 

Maybe it was the way we’d been once, in the time of Arlathan. 

He reached the bottom step, and stood level with us on the ground: a tall man, like so many of the elves I’d seen here. He was only a couple of inches shorter than Alistair, though he managed to look at us all as if we were beneath him. 

“Greetings. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Zathrian, Keeper of this clan, its guide and preserver of our ancient lore. And you are?”

It was a hahren’s voice, I thought: warm and comforting, and full of reassurance and authority. Maker, he even managed to make _me_ feel calmer, despite the tension that cramped the air. 

“Merien Tabris, Keeper,” I said promptly, bowing from the chest as I would have done to any elder, and adding a little belatedly: “Of the Grey Wardens. Um. This is my fellow Warden, Alistair, and our companions… Leliana, Wynne, Sten, Morrigan, and—”

“Zevran Arainai. _Arhim atish’an_ , Keeper.”

My mouth closed around the half-made introductions. Of _course_ Zevran spoke the bloody language. Obviously. I straightened up, observing that, naturally, he bowed with great elegance, and—to me, at least—his accent sounded perfect. I tried not to hate him for it. 

Zathrian looked consideringly at him, and then nodded crisply. “ _Andaran atish’an_.”

Beside us, the fire leapt and crackled. There was a loud _pop_ , and for a moment I thought of Mother, who always said such things were omens. Maybe Zathrian thought so too, for one knotted hand closed more tightly around his staff, and those piercing green eyes found mine. 

“Warden, my people have been aware of your presence in the forest. We waited to see if you would leave, but you did not. If you were seeking us in order to bring us news of the Blight in the south, it is not needed. I have long sensed its corruption.”

I inclined my head respectfully. “I’m afraid we don’t come bearing news so much as asking for help, Keeper. Many years ago—”

Zathrian winced impatiently. “Yes. The treaties. Mithra mentioned this. May I see them?”

I looked over my shoulder at Alistair. He’d already taken the leather wallet from its place of safety in his pack, and came forwards to offer it for inspection. At first, I thought Zathrian actually expected me to play intermediary and pass the documents to him, but he moved and took the thick parchment from Alistair’s fingers, albeit with a slight lapse of grace. The treaties’ mouldy, stagnant smell rose up, ripe with age, as Zathrian’s fingers moved reverently over the pages, skimming the signatures and heavy wax seals at the bottom. 

“Truly,” he murmured, apparently to himself, “I had never thought to see…. Of course, one hopes such a day will not come, but still! Thank you,” he said, addressing me, and passing the treaties into my hands. “It is an honour to see these papers, and to have Grey Wardens among us. I… I must apologise for the lack of an appropriate welcome.”

Well, he’d changed his tune. Had we sufficiently proved our identity, then? Did the Dalish consider Grey Wardens so magnificent? I didn’t know, and the not knowing made me nervous. I gave the treaties back to Alistair, the awkward discomfort of this little interview beginning to tell in the way my fingers grew clumsy. For a moment, I thought I might end up dropping four-centuries-old Grey Warden documents straight into the fire, but I prevailed. 

“Not at all,” I managed. “I understand the need to guard your people’s privacy, especially from armed travellers.”

Zathrian’s expression grew a little less stern, and he nodded slowly. “Indeed. However, I am afraid that, this time, the Dalish shall not honour their commitment.”

“What?” Alistair interjected, though the elf ignored him. “But—” 

“The Blight is a threat that affects everyone,” I protested. “We must unite—”

“I am well aware of that,” Zathrian said sharply, fixing me with a withering look. “But you come late, Warden. The clans have already moved north. We are the last to leave, though not by my choice.”

I frowned. “I… I don’t understand.”

The keeper sighed and leaned upon his staff, those shimmering eyes growing hooded and weary. 

“No. This will require some explanation. I expected as much. We… have been afflicted by sickness, Warden.” Zathrian raised his head and nodded at the scattered crowd of Dalish, still keeping their distance from his wagon, but watching us intently. “You see here perhaps half of the clan. Many of us may not survive, and we are certainly in no shape to march to war.”

I glanced over my shoulder, the reflexive city-bred fear of disease clenching around my heart. Whatever it was, I hoped it wasn’t catching.

Zathrian lifted one crabbed hand, gesturing behind him to the long, low tents we’d seen as we descended the ridge, and which lay to the farthest side of the camp. 

“Our sick are tended here. We cannot save them, but we will not abandon them. I am sorry we are not better equipped to help you… but perhaps you will accept an offer of hospitality? Share our camp and our food, tonight. Be on your way in the morning. Is that acceptable?”

“That is… generous,” I said carefully, little bells of warning tinkling at the back of my mind. 

Zathrian’s scouts had tracked us through the forest. He had known of our presence, I had no doubt, and yet he seemed very keen to be rid of us. 

Zevran had told me that, if we found the Dalish, it would be because they allowed us to do so. I didn’t know if that was what had happened; perhaps, if it hadn’t been for Zev himself, we’d have got out of the forest without ever knowing Mithra and her archers had been there. Or perhaps that was what I was _meant_ to think. 

I didn’t know, and the conflicting possibilities were beginning to weigh heavily on the back of my neck. I turned and glanced at my companions. Wynne was the first to catch my eye and, at a slight nod from me, she stepped forwards and inclined her head respectfully to Zathrian. 

“We thank you for your hospitality at this difficult time, Keeper. If I may… my name is Wynne, and I am an enchanter of the Circle of Magi. I have some small skill as a healer, and—”

Zathrian shook his head abruptly. “No. Your kindness is appreciated, but no. What ails our clan cannot be cured with magic. Not your kind.”

She bristled a little, though she hid it well, and I cleared my throat, slipping in before anyone had a chance to mess this up. 

“Then it’s settled. Thank you, Keeper. We most gratefully accept.”

He looked faintly relieved. “Good. I shall have my First show you where you may pitch your tents. Please, familiarise yourself with the camp. I ask only that you leave the sick in peace.”

Well, it was better than nothing, I supposed. I nodded and mustered as much grace as I could to thank him… grace that Zathrian brushed away like it was nothing more than an irritation.

_**~o~O~o~** _

I wasn’t sure what a Keeper’s First was. It turned out to be an apprentice of some kind, in the form of a small, delicate girl who introduced herself as Lanaya. 

Dressed like Zathrian, in long robes covered by a voluminous cloak, she wore her fair hair in a mess of short braids and pigtails, and even the lines of her tattoos seemed dainty, like they’d been sketched over her smooth skin by a lighter hand than the thick, dark shapes I’d seen on the scouts.

She led us across the clearing, pointing out all the necessary bits of the camp along the way, and naming what she called their hahrens. I was confused at first, until I realised they used the word — _ our _ word — the same way we used ‘elder’ in the alienage; as a term of respect, but not always leadership. My brain raced as I tried to keep up, for the soft sweetness of Lanaya’s voice was a cunning disguise for a brisk, relentless pace. That meant, then, that the Dalish held certain members of their clan in high esteem. She pointed out their storykeeper, Hahren Sarel, their craftsmaster, Hahren Varathorn — with whom we might trade, if he permitted it, should we need anything — and Hahren Elora, who was indicated with a brief wave of one small hand as being at the foot of the clearing, down by the stream that curved, unseen, behind the tree line, and where we might draw water. 

“She is our halla mistress,” Lanaya said, glancing wistfully in the direction she’d pointed, “and a most experienced healer. Although not even she can help those poor people.”

I frowned, still stuck on what a halla was. Alistair cleared his throat. 

“Pardon me for asking, but… what exactly _is_ this sickness?”

Lanaya blinked and looked at him in surprise. In the few moments we’d been talking with her, she’d seemed much more amenable than the other Dalish we’d met, but she still didn’t appear to have expected him to address her directly. As I looked at her, the briefest flicker of real fear seemed to pass over her eyes, but it was gone so fast I thought I’d imagined it. 

“I… I really couldn’t say,” she murmured, drawing to a halt at a patch of ground a respectable distance from the rest of the camp, but still sheltered by the trees. A soft lowing sound, like that of cattle, drifted on the air. “It would not be my place to discuss the affairs of the clan. If you were to ask the Keeper….”

“He doesn’t seem all that free with his information.” Alistair wrinkled his nose doubtfully. “In fact, I rather got the impress— _ow_!”

“Oh, I do apologise,” Zevran said, making a show of dropping his pack on Alistair’s foot… and narrowly disguising the fact he’d just kicked him. “How clumsy of me.”

“Thank you for your help,” I said hurriedly. “We’ll, um, we’ll try not to be any trouble.”

Lanaya smiled at me, but didn’t utter any polite ameliorations. She left us to settle ourselves—quite ostentatiously set apart from the clan, so we could make our own fire, cook our own food… not that we were to feel unwelcome, of  _ course _ —and retired, leaving us not entirely alone. Most of the Dalish who’d gathered to watch our meeting with Zathrian had dispersed, the entertainment (or perhaps the immediate threat) being over, but a few still lingered. Ostensibly, they were mostly occupied, stacking sacks of supplies, or inspecting the wheel rims of wagons, or other such non-tasks, though a couple did just stand and stare without any pretext or pretence. 

“Makes you awfully exposed, doesn’t it?” Leliana said quietly, as we started to pitch our tents. 

I nodded. “I don’t like this at all. They’re….”

I didn’t want to say ‘hiding something’. There were far too many people around. 

“They don’t trust us,” Alistair observed, slinging canvas over the poles. He frowned slightly as he looked at me. “They don’t even trust _you_.”

I grimaced. He was right, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant a sensation. 

“To be fair,” Zevran chipped in, kneeling to begin scraping a space for a fire, “they don’t trust any of us, elven or not. Are they still watching?”

“Mm-hm.” I glanced surreptitiously at the knot of three men beside the nearest wagon. Two of the men weren’t even pretending to be doing anything; they were just standing there, glaring at us. 

As I did my best not to be seen looking, I noticed a fourth stride up to join them, leaning in behind the others and starting a hastily whispered conversation. He was young and, unusually among what I’d seen of the Dalish, bore no tattoos. The only ones without them I’d spotted so far were the few children scampering about, but I didn’t stop to stare. Obviously, the news of our presence was spreading even among those of the clan who hadn’t been there when we arrived… and that prospect hardly filled me with glee. 

I turned my back and we got on quietly with the business of making camp, mindful to show our gratitude at being allowed these crumbs of hospitality. It wasn’t what I’d expected, and it certainly wasn’t anything like the stories I’d so eagerly devoured when I was a child. No Emerald Knights here; no magnificent, beautiful people with the wild hearts of the woodland, and the gentle compassion of a storybook’s broad pen. 

I determined that, when the evening drew in, we’d find out more about this sickness, and—if the Dalish truly couldn’t honour the treaty—we’d leave in the morning, and at least we’d  _ know _ . I tried to tell myself that, like it made everything better. We’d know, instead of sloping away to the west in the fugue of failure… and that was something. Maybe, even if Zathrian’s clan couldn’t help us, they could get word to the other clans, the ones who’d already headed north. That seemed a sensible prospect to hold onto, and I tried to force myself into believing that it might happen. 

I was so deep in contemplating it, I barely noticed the young Dalish elf crossing the clearing towards me. 

“Hey! I said, hey. It is, isn’t it?”

We had most of the tents up, and Sten was taking his usual duty of coaxing a fire from recalcitrant wood. Morrigan had evidently decided she’d done enough to help, and settled herself by one of the trees, while Leliana and Wynne had just gone to investigate the drawing of water. 

I turned, frowning in mild confusion. Maethor grumbled at the interloper, and Alistair started to tense, like he really thought the clan honestly intended to string him up. 

“Merien… Merien Tabris?”

The Dalish boy looked about my age, his deep tan skin not yet as weathered as many of the clan. His dark, reddish-chestnut hair was fairly short, too, and hung in roughly cut layers, just long enough to tuck behind his wide-set, heavy ears. He wore a patched, rather mismatched ensemble of deep green and brown broadcloth—with muddy, fur-stitched boots and a cloak that looked as if it probably smelled like dead dog and ditch-water—and yet there was something about him that seemed familiar. He certainly stood out among the sharp-featured, haughty Dalish… and, as I looked at his face, with its rounded nose and flared, high cheekbones, a sense of insane impossibility washed over me. 

I opened my mouth to speak, but my tongue was dry. It couldn’t be, could it? 

He seemed to be thinking much the same thing. As he gazed at me, his small, dark eyes widened. “It _is_ you, isn’t it? I don’t believe it! The… the last I heard of you, you were meant to be marrying a blacksmith or something. What—?”

My voice finally unglued itself, and I stuttered jerkily. 

“D-Daeon?” His name left me in a choked breath, a whisper of a world I’d thought I’d left behind forever. I didn’t know whether to laugh or run, and settled for shaking my head in disbelief. “Yes, it’s… I mean, it’s me. I-I don’t know what to— Maker! You… you actually _found_ them?”

Daeon shrugged. “Well, I always said I would, didn’t I?” 

Oh, yes… that was the boy I knew. The arrogant, stubborn boy with the scraped knees and patched breeches, who used to drive his older brother to distraction. That sharp hint of pride in his voice could have anyone who didn’t know better mistaking him for Dalish, but he wasn’t. 

He was a gutter rat flat-ear, just like me. 


	6. Chapter 6

“I can’t believe _you’re_ the outsider the clan’s talking about.”

Daeon started to cross towards me, but stopped halfway, his face screwed up in critical incredulity. The three men near the wagon were staring openly, and one leaned over to mutter something to his fellows. I was aware of a handful of other Dalish coming over to form an interested little knot behind them, while at my back there was a decidedly nonchalant shifting of bodies. Maethor was already standing at my side, and of course Zevran just happened to drift to my elbow, smiling genially at the wild elves.

I shook my head, tired and cold and flat-out broken with confusion. This boy—this man before me—was a cold breath of home, and it filled me with a bizarre mixture of glee and terror to see him again… and to see him like _this_.

“It doesn’t seem possible.” Daeon put his hands on his hips, surveying our ragged, mismatched group, and frowned suspiciously. “The last I heard, you were meant to be marrying a blacksmith or something.”

Curiosity prickled at the air around me, and I shrugged, suddenly feeling awfully exposed. “It’s a long story.”

“A friend of yours, I take it?” Zevran enquired solicitously, his gaze moving slowly between Daeon and the gaggle of Dalish behind him.

One of the young hunters by the wagon snorted as he crossed his arms over his leather-padded chest, and muttered something in Elvish, in the calculated tones of a false whisper. I didn’t know what the words meant, but I saw Daeon wince. He turned to glance back at the men, gesturing vaguely in my direction as he did so.

“Yes, I know this woman from the alienage in Denerim. Her cousin is a good friend of my brother’s, and she is of honourable family. That much, I can vouch for.”

_Well, let me just catch myself from swooning…._

I snatched up the uncharitable thoughts and scolded myself for them. After all, what else should I have expected?

“I knew him as Daeon Ebron,” I told Zevran, lowering my voice just a little. “He was the middle of three brothers. Always talking about running off to join the Dalish… used to drive people crazy. Daeon left Denerim with his younger brother, looking for the Dalish, just before— uh, before my wedding,” I finished, feeling my expression tighten a little as the weight of old, half-healed wounds throbbed within my memories.

Behind me, Alistair was keeping his distance from any potential confrontation, but I could almost taste the curiosity humming off him. He’d moved forwards a little, his presence just behind my shoulder a comforting thing, with the rime of sweat and the gentle clink of splinted armour.

Daeon glanced at me and frowned. The frown deepened into a scowl as he surveyed the humans behind me, and he crossed his arms over his chest, his thin frame all taut challenge and suspicion. He looked strange like that, I thought. Like he was wearing the Dalish’s hostility the way a little boy wears his father’s coat.

“So, let me get this straight. _You’re_ the elven Warden Mithra found? You? Cyrion Tabris’ daughter is a Grey Warden?”

His lip curled, and a stiff, reflexive pride welled in me. I mirrored his stance, folding my own arms, and jutting out my chin in a manner that probably wasn’t very attractive.

“Yes. You could at least try not to sound so surprised.”

Daeon snorted. “Well, you always had a big mouth, but at least you used to make an effort to keep it under control. I just…. How did it happen? What, was your betrothed so ugly you had to run away? Bet your father wasn’t pleased. All that coin he splashed around the place….”

I winced. _That_ was the boy I knew; standing on a corner by one of the tenements, a jar of ale in his hand, drawing courage from the sneering, giggling lads behind him. I watched the young Dalish hunters lingering at Daeon’s back, grinning over his shoulder, and wondered if maybe our two ways weren’t so different after all.

“Things… happened,” I said slowly. “Things you don’t know about. You ought to hear them. You and Aelwyn both, if he’s—”

Daeon’s face darkened. “Ael’s not here. He didn’t make it.”

“Oh.”

I didn’t know what to say and, as all the arrogance and bluster seemed to seep out of Daeon’s face, I was afraid to ask what had happened.

“I… I’m sorry.”

He cleared his throat, frowning at the scrubby grass, and answered the question I had yet to frame.

“We ran into some thugs on the road, barely a day south of Denerim.” Daeon shrugged bitterly. “We had nothing worth stealing, but I guess they thought they’d have a little fun. They left us both spitting blood by the roadside. We found somewhere to rest but, come the morning, Ael didn’t wake up.”

I pressed my lips together tightly, watching the shifting stances of the Dalish behind him. They knew the story, obviously, and it still angered them. A few soft murmurs in Elvish moved through the knot of hunters and lean, hard-faced lads, and I started to worry for the humans who accompanied me.

I glanced nervously at Zevran but, if he was thinking the same, he didn’t show it. His face was carefully blank; unreadable, the way I’ve often heard shems say that elves can be. One who passes a brook only to cross to the other side never sees the shingle in the stream’s bed… or so Father used to say.

It hit me then: I wasn’t shocked or aggrieved by what Daeon said. True, I’d barely known any of the three brothers. Taeodor had been Soris’ friend, not mine… but I didn’t know whether the sudden twinge of concern I felt for my companions had blotted out the things I _should_ have felt, or whether I’d grown so far away from my roots I couldn’t even feel them being burned.

“I had to leave him,” Daeon said softly, still looking at the ground by my feet. “So I just… ran. I don’t even remember where. Didn’t look back. I was half-dead by the time the clan stumbled across me and—by the grace of the Creators—they took me in. It’s been, what, a little over three moons now, I suppose.”

I blinked. So long? And yet it hardly felt like any time at all. He smiled darkly.

“I’ve a long way to go before I’m really _elvhen_ , and I guess I’ll always be a flat-ear, but I believe I’m starting to fit in… isn’t that right?” he added, turning to a couple of the young men behind him.

There were a few surly smiles, and a little bit of rough shoving and shoulder-clapping, but I hadn’t been let out from under the lens yet, and their attention turned back to my motley group soon enough.

“Doesn’t explain _this_ , though,” Daeon said archly, nodding at the shallow camp we’d been putting together. “And… you. Mind if I join you? I’d like to hear the story.”

I nodded, gestured vaguely at the fire Sten was putting together, and tried to hide my wince. “Please.”

It wouldn’t be the first time I’d told my tale; but it would be one of the hardest tellings.

**_~o~O~o~_ **

We ended up with Daeon sitting at our fire, accompanied by a straggly handful of Dalish. _They_ didn’t deign to sit with us, but stood in a rough half-circle around the edge of the clearing, ostentatiously listening and probably passing judgement.

Darkness began to draw in, and our fire was a smaller, tidier, paler version of the great fire at the centre of the camp: the place where the elders sat, and the children were gathered in to warm by the flames, and where it had been made quietly obvious that we were not welcome.

I introduced the others and—Maethor laying at my feet, and the flames smouldering sluggishly, with a thin curl of gritty smoke rising from the slightly damp wood—I began to talk. I told Daeon of the wedding, and of the things that had happened and, even if I’d wanted to pare back the details, I couldn’t. He wouldn’t let me. Of course, he knew every inch of the alienage as well as I did, not to mention almost every face in the story.

When I got to Vaughan’s second interruption of our celebrations, try as I did not to dwell on what had happened, Daeon scowled blackly and spat into the grass.

“Shemlen bastards! What, he just _took_ them? Didn’t anyone do anything? Say something?”

Ripples of unease and anger ran through the Dalish gathered behind him. I’d noticed others drifting to join them and, much as I didn’t want to be the evening’s tuppenny entertainment, I was at the centre of several people’s attention.

“I… I don’t know,” I said, glancing across the fire.

To my left, Alistair was sitting on his pack and looking decidedly nervous. He was easily the most identifiably human of us; Morrigan was clinging to her aura of Wilder strangeness like a shield, and had retreated to a taut crouch in the shadows, her staff held pointedly across her knees, while Leliana was seated demurely at Wynne’s feet, the mage perched carefully on a piece of dry log. I wasn’t sure whether the Orlesian had calculated the image of obeisance to an elder as one that might assuage Dalish sentiments, or whether it was just happenstance, or even the desire to offer Wynne a little protection.

Either way, it wasn’t _her_ that the Elvhen kept glaring at.

“What d’you mean you don’t know?” Daeon demanded, the firelight flaring brightly against his dark skin, his eyes glowing with its reflections like hot coals. “You were there! How can you not know?”

Alistair cleared his throat and shifted, but held his tongue. I shrugged, trying to be as dismissive as I could, like the retelling didn’t stir up everything I wanted to keep buried.

“One of them hit me. I was out cold; only woke up once we were in the arl’s estate, and there wasn’t really time to talk. They… they split us up after that. Killed one of the girls when she resisted. Did… did you know Nola Elran?”

“Old Tormey’s daughter?” Daeon’s face turned bleak and angry, and he nodded curtly. “Mm. Taeodor used to work with her brother, before he went to the Bannorn. She…?”

I nodded. “Mm-hm.”

The mutterings grew louder. A couple of the Dalish boys cussed, and one said something that was evidently challenging enough to make one of the women who’d joined them shush him with a stern look.

I moved on as fast as I could, giving as few details as possible. I underlined what Duncan had done for us, but made no mention of what he’d said about my mother, and I made much of the bravery Soris had shown, without saying anything of what we’d seen in Vaughan’s chambers. I suppose it was as much for me as for them; I had no wish to remember Shianni that way, or to let myself wonder whether she’d even begun to recover before Loghain burned the alienage down around her.

Still, even with my omissions, there was outrage, and I could see why humans were so vocal in their wariness of the Dalish. For the first time, I was glad of the forest and the wild, bleak, desolateness of the place. It seemed like, if the camp had been close to any human settlement, we’d have seen a barn or two burned that night, and I didn’t want to be responsible for inciting a second Red Crossing.

I ploughed on, speaking as passionately as I knew how of Ostagar, and the reality of the darkspawn threat. I told of Loghain’s withdrawal from the battle, and the way he’d blamed the Grey Wardens for betraying the king. That clearly meant little to the Dalish—they cared nothing for the vagaries of human politics, and their opinion of shems’ honour was so low they didn’t seem surprised at the treachery.

They didn’t blink much at my tales of darkspawn, either, and I started to think nothing could shake these people. Daeon had grown hard-eyed, silent, and still, his shoulders hunched and his brow furrowed darkly.

I glossed over most of Redcliffe and the Circle Tower; they didn’t need to believe us to be in the service of some human nobleman, even if it felt a little bit like that was true, what with Alistair’s constant mentions of Arl Eamon’s condition. He would probably be glad we’d be back on the road again come the morning, I thought with just a hint of bitterness.

Finally, I did what I so badly wanted not to do, and told of the climate in Denerim… and of the purge. I wasn’t sure I should—it was plain how angry it would make the Dalish—but I had already talked until my throat was rough and dry, and Daeon deserved to know. I deserved to tell it, too, I supposed; to admit that it was my fault, the result of what I’d done.

The _elvhen_ whispered among themselves, and the whispers took flight, rising up like birds against the darkened trees. I felt their stares on me, felt their oddly mingled disapproval and disbelief, like I was some kind of ill omen, a talisman of bad luck and bloodshed. I almost started to believe it too, until I made myself remember what little good we _had_ done. Redcliffe, and the people we’d saved at the Circle Tower… I’d brought good fortune to them, and I clung quietly to that.

Daeon gazed into the fire, all the hard lines and angularity of his anger slumped into a sullen, wounded stillness.

“Taeodor,” he murmured. “I… I didn’t know.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, though I knew it wouldn’t do much to help.

Deep in the undergrowth that fringed the clearing, small creatures scuffled and, in the dark of the trees, night birds waited on creaking branches, the occasional muffled call of an owl echoing through the shadows. Somewhere, a fox barked, its voice a wailing yelp on the cold air.

Daeon glanced up at me, his eyes small and dark as the kind of black beans we used to keep packed under sand, salted away for the long winters. Mother used to make a stew with them that tasted like old shoe leather. It seemed such a stupid thing to remember, such a silly piece of nonsense to think of then… and yet it made me ache for home

“What about your family, though?” he asked softly. “Soris? And—”

“Truthfully? I don’t know. We couldn’t get in.” I shook my head. I didn’t want to think about it any more. “But I doubt there are many families left unchanged. You’ve heard the stories, haven’t you?”

Daeon nodded bitterly. The Elvhen around us had turned disturbingly quiet. None of my companions had uttered a word either, and that left me unnerved. I disliked being the focus of so many gazes, and I wasn’t used to people hanging on my words.

I stole a sidelong glance at Zevran, because he seemed to be the only one who would speak in front of the Dalish—the only one who might carry any weight here—but he was simply sitting quietly, as elegant and still as an oiled blade.

“I’m sorry, Merien,” Daeon said eventually, which surprised me, because apologies were like tooth-pullings for boys like him. “I… I suppose I can’t help thinking, if Ael and I hadn’t gone when we did, or if—”

“It wouldn’t have changed anything,” I said, not because I believed it, but because I knew how pointless that particular exercise was.

He frowned again and hung his head, his knotted fingers working, one hand against the other, as he stared into the flames.

Well, who was to say what might have been different? If I’d behaved differently on the day of the wedding, done something or not done something, then yes, perhaps it would have passed without incident. Perhaps it would have been another day, another moment that flared up and brought the world crashing down around us. Perhaps not.

Perhaps, at this very moment, I would be sitting before a warm fire, listening to the song of Nelaros’ hammer on some semi-distant anvil, my fingers busily darning baby’s clothes, and my memories full of mundane joys and tears, instead of the magnitudes of war.

Perhaps we never know what is meant to be.

Still, one thing I learned that night was that there was little point in trying to deny the Dalish notion of clan. As my tale finished its telling, it became clear that Daeon’s pain was the clan’s pain. His anger was their anger, and their comfort was there for him.

He bade me goodnight, nodding with surprising respect to my companions and, as he turned to leave, the young men who’d stood with him gathered around him. One placed a hand on his shoulder and, watching him walk away with heavy, slow steps, I felt glad that he had that… and angry, too, in a strange way. Bitter, that _he_ should have found this place, and that it should be so unlike the worlds we’d dreamed of when we were children, when my head was full of Halamshiral and legends of the Emerald Knights.

The Dalish dispersed, and I shivered in the night air. Zevran slapped his palms against his knees and gave an exaggerated sigh.

“Ah, well… time to turn in, I believe. We should rest while we have the chance, no?”

I nodded dumbly, but made no move. The rustles and movements of blankets and bodies passed me by like summer breeze, and I looked up the trees, their thin fingers shadows against shadows, silhouettes against a deeper darkness.

The dreams came more often than not then, and every so often I would feel the same sort of sensation when I was awake. I felt it then; the creeping pull of something that was out there… darkspawn, I supposed. Just our luck to find them running feral in the forest, though if they were already this far north, and this far east, Ferelden was as good as lost—especially if we couldn’t count on the Dalish. I wondered how we’d ever thought a four hundred year old treaty would compel them. _My_ decision, naturally. _My_ eagerness to see the wild elves, to fall into the arms of brethren I had yet to meet… huh. I was a fool, I decided, and I wouldn’t let my folly set us back again.

Tiny pinpricks of rain began to mist from the darkness then; less an actual fall than the subtle moistness of dew breathing on the air. I blinked slowly, and let the night wet my eyelids.

“You all right?”

I opened my eyes at the sound of Alistair’s voice, and found him loitering uncertainly between me and the fire, which was slowly dying down to a steady, dimmed glow. Close behind him, Wynne was humming softly as she shook out her bedroll, with a small tsk of annoyance as what looked like a half-darned sock dropped out of it.

“Of course.”

I marshalled a smile, which probably more resembled a sickly grimace, and earned me a raised eyebrow. Alistair moved aside to give Wynne room, and looked as if he’d have liked to say something more, but our camp was even more confined than usual, and I couldn’t bear any more talking. I ducked past him with another weak grin, and headed to my tent, with Maethor padding after me.

For once, the smell of wet dog seemed like a wonderful, comforting thing.

**_~o~O~o~_ **

I expected to rise early in the morning. We’d meant to leave quickly, with the minimum of fuss, and preferably before we outstayed our welcome.

I didn’t expect that I would be awoken before first light—barely a few hours after I’d laid down to rest—and met at the flap of my tent by Zathrian, all swathed in his keeper’s robes, leaning on his staff and holding a brass lantern with a tallow candle inside, throwing chequered patterns across his puckered, frowning face.

“Warden.”

He greeted me cordially, as if I hadn’t just fallen out of my bedroll, hair like a haystack and clothes rimed with sleep. I longed for the days when I actually used to bathe and change my dresses and undershirts… they’d never seemed farther away.

“Keeper,” I returned, inclining my head respectfully as I pulled my woollen cloak tighter around myself, in defence against the cold, dark, damp air. “Um, we were going to move on as soon as—”

“A number of the clan have been to speak with me this night,” he said, flexing one thin hand around his staff to silence me, those green eyes shimmering faintly in the candlelight as he studied the look of incomprehension I no doubt wore. “I have heard a great deal of your deeds.”

“Um…?”

“Walk with me,” Zathrian suggested, gesturing to the camp.

Past his narrow frame, I saw Leliana poke her head from her tent, catching my eye with a questioning expression. I nodded.

“It would be my honour,” I said with another slight bow, still so mired in the ways I was accustomed to addressing elders… even ones so far removed from anything I was used to as Zathrian.

Perhaps it was foolish, allowing him to escort me away from my companions, but I didn’t think of it like that; I wanted to follow, and I flattered myself he was treating me as a Grey Warden—as _the_ Grey Warden, perhaps. So often, I’d been used to people facing Alistair with that title and, while I didn’t begrudge him it, that sense of my own dignity and importance puffed me up as I walked in the keeper’s footsteps.

Zathrian took me to the long, low tents that housed the clan’s sick. As we crossed the camp, drawing close, I heard stifled moans and quiet cries denting the air: the sounds of pain, and of those too weak to scream. I’d heard the same at Ostagar, and my first thought was darkspawn corruption. Had they come this far? Was it the Blight causing the sickness we’d heard mentioned? Was that what I felt, poisoning everything? I nearly wanted to believe it, because that would have meant the darkness I felt wasn’t within me… wasn’t changing _me_.

Zathrian halted, and he lifted up the lantern he carried, its orange glow spilling over his lined face. The tattoos on his skin seemed to leap and crawl like live vines, and for a moment I was reminded of the dyads that had nearly seen us out of the forest. A shiver traced my spine as he leaned in, his voice quiet and earnest, his eyes shimmering in the reflected light.

“Forgive me for rousing you in this manner, but I would have you know the reason we cannot aid you, Warden. I… apologise for my lack of candour before, although I am sure you understand. You see, I did not realise someone would vouch for you.”

I blinked, my gaze sliding nervously to the tents. So, this was the harvest I reaped from Daeon recognising me, was it? I wondered just how much of my tale—how much of everything I’d spilled at the campfire—had returned to Zathrian’s eager ears. Clearly, there was no underestimating the clan’s ability to spread gossip with just as much silent elegance as any bunch of steel-eyed old alienage wives, trading disapproving whispers in dark doorways.

“I appreciate your need to safeguard your people, Keeper,” I said, trying to avert my attention from the dim, squat outlines of the tents.

Zathrian gave me a small, tight-lipped smile. It was almost as if he resented speaking with me, I thought, which seemed strange, because it was _he_ who had woken me, _he_ who had requested this peculiar little audience… and yet I got the feeling that it wasn’t his idea. Moreover, I was fairly certain we were being watched.

I glanced surreptitiously past his shoulder, past the thin spool of light his lantern threw out. The shadowed masses of the aravels lingered close by, their sails creaking in the night air like great moored beasts. Landships, they called them. I’d never spent much time near Denerim’s sprawling docks, but the Dalish wagons did make me think of the great, heavy-hulled vessels that used to feed the city; the kind that ate hundreds of men a year, and spat them out changed and weathered.

Figures almost certainly loitered by the wagons, but they weren’t clear enough for me to make out. Zathrian lowered the lantern, and shadows swarmed us once again. He nodded to the tents, motioning me to accompany him.

“Would that I _had_ held them safe,” he said bitterly, shaking his head. “Ah… but allow me to explain.”

A soft cry came from one of the tents. I saw a light move within, shadows and flickers playing against the thick canvas. There was another pale, keening sound, and then silence—the silence of ended suffering, I thought. Death’s whisper brushed my ears, for I’d seen enough of it to know it, even in the shapeless dark.

Zathrian winced, and turned his head away, his brows tightly drawn.

“It has always been our custom to keep to the forest when we are in the east of Ferelden,” he said, as the lantern-light burnished his features. He did not meet my eye. “Yes, there are dangers here… but it is easier than travelling in human lands. What we did not expect—what _I_ did not foresee—was the beasts lying in wait for us.”

I frowned. “Darkspawn? The horde shouldn’t have—”

“No.” Zathrian raised his head, and those piercing green eyes had grown dull, like clouded gems. “Beasts of another kind. Werewolves.”

“What?”

My horror and disbelief must have been evident, for he sighed shortly and continued, as if explaining to a small child.

“There was a time in Ferelden’s history when werebeasts roamed the lands in great numbers. There are plentiful stories of this, I am sure.”

“Yes, but they’re—” I stopped, and clamped my mouth shut before my stupidity got the better of me completely.

Zathrian arched an eyebrow. “‘Only stories’?”

I bowed my head. “Forgive me, Keeper. But—”

It was foolish, of course. Why be so unready to believe in werewolves? Had I not, until the first time I faced one in the Korcari Wilds, believed that darkspawn were nothing more than a story to frighten children?

After everything I’d seen—demons, abominations, and monsters of every description—I firmly believed the world could hold no greater horrors.

Naturally, I was wrong.

“They ambushed us,” Zathrian went on, speaking briskly now, as if it pained him to dwell on the matter. “We drove them back, but we were… unprepared. Much damage was done, as you will see.”

He motioned me towards the tent. As we drew close, a woman emerged from within, holding another lantern. She looked a little younger than Zathrian, though not by much, and her grey hair was caught in twin braids knotted at the nape of her neck. She wore long, dark robes, their original colour probably some sort of russet brown, though they were spattered with stains… several of which looked like blood. Her face, like the keeper’s, was an intricate pattern of lines and tattoos, framing large, pale eyes the colour of spring skies. I hunched myself even further into my cloak and, as she looked at me, the sadness and hopelessness in her expression seemed to cleave right into my flesh.

The smell hit me first: blood, soil and urine, and close-packed, dense sweat of bodies, and death. Stretchers and makeshift cots lay end-to-end and side-by-side beneath the timber and canvas frame, and a single lantern, aside from the one held by the woman who had greeted us, stood at the far end of the tent. Its faint glow outlined the shapes of elves—men and women, some older and a few younger than me, almost children—contorted in agony.

Every last one of them had been bandaged. Bloody dressings and splinted limbs abounded, and yet their pain seemed… quiet. Many lay frighteningly still, their chests heaving in shallow, thin gasps, their eyes blankly gazing at nothing. Sweat slicked their skin, and fear crawled inside me, for it was like the sicknesses that used to plague the alienage after particularly hot, wet summers. People would cough, and choke, and scream with pain, and then they would grow thin and still… and finally they would die, staring at nothing, wet with sweat and weighing less than a feather.

I blinked, trying to force the thoughts from my mind. If what the keeper said was true, this was no sweating sickness.

“They attacked without warning or mercy,” Zathrian said, close behind me. “They are savage and unrelenting; creatures possessed by terrible spirits. Their bloodlust knows no bounds. It is a curse,” he added, his staff ticking dully against the packed earth beneath our feet as he passed by me, moving to the side of the nearest cot. “A curse that runs rampant in their blood, and it is the blood that passes it on, make no mistake.”

He stilled by the unmoving body of the elf on the narrow pallet, and lifted his lantern. Zathrian’s face was sheathed in shadows, but I watched as the light fell on the young man before him… I watched, and I did not believe what I saw.

He was the same as the others. A boy of the same age as Daeon and the hunters who’d stood beside him—all lean muscles and wiry sinew, with his hair braided back in a mass of tiny plaits, woven with small trinkets of bone and wood. Bloodstained bandages wrapped his arms, and a dirty blanket had been drawn up to his chest. His swaddled hands laid neatly atop it, crossed beneath his collarbones.

He was dead, and death should have made him peaceful. He’d been tended, his wounds dressed, and yet there was no repose. What, in life, must have been a face like any other—yet to be marked with tattoos, yet to be lined with living—was twisted, mutated, turned to something terrible. His mouth was pulled back, his whole jaw shifted in shape and, for a moment, I thought it had been broken before he died… but it wasn’t a break. The entire set of his face had changed, the muscles pulled and corded beneath the taut-drawn skin, and his eyes lay wide, staring in eternal terror at something I could not see.

“Those who are tainted with it suffer great agony,” Zathrian said, his hand moving almost tenderly over the dead elf, pausing to skim the outline of his cheek. “Then death. Ultimately. We lost many this way after the ambush.”

Somewhere further down the row of pallets, another elf moaned in pain. The woman who had met us moved to her patient’s side, and the glow of lanterns diminished as she left. I saw her hands move: she poured the contents of a small vial between the elf’s lips, and his cries grew softer. I wasn’t sure whether they drugged them to ease the pain, or just to keep the sick ones quiet. She turned, moving further away, her lantern held before her.

Only Zathrian’s light remained, and that in one pool upon the dead body before me. I watched the keeper’s long, knotted fingers, crabbed with years, touch the young man’s slack, unmoving mouth. He pushed back the upper lip, and the glint of teeth caught the candlelight… long, pointed teeth, interlocked like the canines of a dog.

“Death,” Zathrian said softly, “or a transformation into something monstrous.”

His hand moved from the boy’s mouth, touching with gentle reverence the only wound I saw on him that seemed fresh: the bloom of red blood above his heart, just peeping from the bandages.

I stared for a long moment and, for that same stretch of empty, aching time, Zathrian remained still too. We just stood there, by the body of the half-turned elf, while all around us other Dalish lay in pain, consumed by this curse of which their keeper spoke.

The stench of sickness filled my throat. All I could think of was getting out, but a part of me was intrigued. That part of me, hardened by all I’d seen, all I’d never believed possible and had yet had so irrevocably proven, right before my eyes… that part of me was enthralled by what I saw.

“Is—” I wet my lower lip uncertainly. “Is there no way to help them?”

Zathrian turned slowly to me, the light of the lantern washing between us. The shadows folded around his face, his eyes twin points of paleness in the gloom. I couldn’t make out his expression but, when he spoke, his voice was full of the weary sadness of an old man who knows an uncomfortable truth.

“I doubt it, Warden. The only thing that could help them must come from the source of the curse itself, and that… that would be no trivial task to retrieve.”

The glow of the other lantern—why keep the dead, or soon-to-be dead in anything but darkness, I supposed—began to make its way back down the length of the tent. My gaze darted to it, like a moth helplessly drawn to a flame, or perhaps to a glimmer of hope.

I blinked, and wet my lip nervously. “You’re… you’re talking about a werewolf?”

“No.” Zathrian’s eyes narrowed, and he regarded me critically, as if judging whether I was fit to hear his truth. “No, not a werewolf. The one who made the werewolves come to be.”

He gestured to the mouth of the tent, indicating we should speak alone. I nodded, more than happy to leave that place.

The cold air scraped my skin like a blade, and I breathed deeply as I glanced across to the far fringes of the camp, wanting to pull all the damp earth and pine and smoke smells right down into the pits of my lungs. The others had stayed in the little enclave we’d been allowed; I couldn’t see them past the great fire, just the outlines of our tents. I wasn’t even sure they’d believe me if I told them what I’d seen, and I suppressed a small shiver as Zathrian emerged behind me.

“There is a great wolf,” he said, his words clipped and succinct. “We call him Witherfang. He dwells deep in the heart of the forest, right at its centre, where the old magic is strong and the wildwood has reclaimed much.”

He began to head back towards his aravel. I followed, my steps a little clumsy, hugging my cloak around myself. Figures moved in the gloom; I supposed I had no way of knowing how many Dalish were watching. Perhaps Daeon was among them.

“The forest has a history of blood and terror. Centuries of it… perhaps much more. Things much worse than werewolves dwell there. Witherfang may be such a creature: more demon than beast.”

Somehow, I wasn’t surprised to hear that.

“I know there was a war here,” I said, quickening my steps to keep pace with Zathrian. “And I know bloodshed thins the Veil. I’ve seen demons. Killed them, too.”

“Hmm.”

He said it without judgement or condescension—just a small, incredulous noise in the back of his throat—and that only made me more determined.

“This wolf,” I insisted. “This Witherfang… he is the cause, then?”

Zathrian nodded curtly, without turning to look at me. “It was within him that the curse originated, and through his blood that it has been spread. If he were to be killed and his heart brought to me, perhaps I could destroy the curse.”

I drew level with him as we halted in the lee of his wagon. The lantern’s light was growing dim and, high overhead, the first ghosts of dawn had begun to light the black, skeletal edges of the trees.

“Perhaps?” I echoed uncertainly.

Zathrian turned, fixing me with those old, shrouded eyes, his face set into a strange kind of look that I thought meant he found me impudent and stupid. Maybe he did. I knew I’d never felt less elven in my life, for all the honour he’d shown me. It would have been easy to let us just leave come the morning and never show me these things, never tell me the truth of what had happened to his clan. I wasn’t sure why he _was_ telling me… it couldn’t be Daeon’s doing, surely. Perhaps the fact of that connection alone was enough, though; the fact that, once before, I had stood up for us, for my people, no matter the consequences. Maybe, I thought, in the keeper’s eyes, I was brave like a Dalish, and not the shemlen’s pet they took people like me for.

I wanted that to be true. And I wanted to help those elves who lay dying, waiting for the release of a nurse’s knife or a draught of blindweed. For all else there was crowding in—the darkspawn, and Loghain, and Eamon, and the very chaos the Blight had already wrought on the world—I wanted to believe we could do this.

The keeper looked coolly at me, his thin lips drawn into a tight line.

“I make no guarantee,” he said quietly. “But it should be possible. Witherfang’s blood holds the key to eliminating the curse, of that I am certain… but to find, let alone kill the beast, would be a difficult task. Our hunters have already tried. I allowed a group of our best men to enter the forest a week ago, and they have not returned.” He nodded towards the fire, and the spread-out ring of wagons beyond it. “You see how badly we are crippled here, Warden? I cannot risk any more of my people, nor allow the clan to move on. We—”

“Need help,” I supplemented, holding firm despite Zathrian’s wince of distaste.

He sighed, and turned his face towards the great fire at the centre of the camp. He looked tired, and more than tired: weary, as if the act of drawing breath itself had become a burden for him.

“Yes,” he admitted grudgingly. “I would not ask you this, Warden. I know of the esteem in which your order is held, but….”

But I didn’t exactly look like a hero, I thought wryly. He had a point. If I’d been in Zathrian’s position, _I_ wouldn’t have trusted me, or the oddly assembled fellowship I travelled with.

“You are of our kind,” he said doubtfully, peering at me from the corner of his eye. “And, given the manner in which your clansman speaks of you, I felt it only fair that you know the truth.”

I nodded slowly, not about to correct him by saying Daeon wasn’t my blood.

“And,” Zathrian added, turning his face away once more, as if simply delivering the words into the empty air, “if you _were_ able to slay Witherfang… if the curse _could_ be lifted… we may be in a position to send runners north. Few of my own men remain, but if the clans could be brought together, as your treaty compels…. Of course, we would need to act quickly. There is no way of knowing how far they may have gone. Clan Sabrae, for example, is known to travel as far as the Marches.”

I frowned, the perfection of the moment soured slightly by his offer of such a deal, despite the fact we sorely needed it. Still, I’d wanted to make a grand gesture, not a bartered bargain, and I straightened my shoulders, tilting my chin up as the first dusky fingers of light began to poke at the clouds’ dark underbellies.

“You have no need to ask, Keeper. I pledge you my blade. I will find this Witherfang.”

Zathrian smiled sadly. “ _Ma serannas_ , Warden. Your companions, though? Do you speak for them also?”

I blinked, my great notions of noble bravery suddenly stilted. The others weren’t going to like this idea… not in the least. I could all too easily imagine the look on Alistair’s face when I said we were going further into the forest, instead of pursuing a cure for Arl Eamon.

And yet, wasn’t _this_ more important? Why should one human nobleman—who might or might not already be dead, and might or might not recover, even if we _did_ track down Genitivi and his elusive research—be more important than the Dalish clansmen who lay here dying?

If we did this one thing, we would have an army of our own. An elven army… and that, I think, was the dream that sold me. My head was full of fluttering banners and the silver whisper of Garahel, my mind as surely tainted as it had been back at Soldier’s Peak.

“Yes,” I said, sounding strangely confident. “Yes, I believe I do.”

I was a fool indeed.


	7. Chapter 7

The others did not take my decision well. At least, not all of them. 

“Well, I think it’s a worthy effort,” Leliana said, sitting before our fire and tightening the straps of her boot. She smiled up at me. “It is the right thing, to offer these people aid.”

Morrigan snorted dismissively but said nothing, her arms folded across her bosom and her golden eyes narrowed to slits. I really hoped she didn’t have any smart comments planned, and I suppressed a frustrated sigh as Alistair strafed his fingers through his hair, the disbelief and annoyance scribed plainly on his face as he clearly struggled to keep calm. 

“I’m not saying it _isn’t_ , but—”

“It’s not the first time we’ve run into complications,” I pointed out, bristling a little as he glared at me. “What about the Circle? Redcliffe?”

He exhaled tersely, a muscle bunching in his jaw. “Yes, fine. Seems like everywhere we go people have their own problems. All I’m saying is that—”

“I do not see the quandary,” Morrigan broke in, her tone flat and hard. “’Tis merely a trade. Find this wolf, kill it, give the elf its heart, and you will compel the clan to fulfil their obligations.”

“Oh, yes,” Alistair sniped. “I’m sure it’ll be just that easy. Come on… werewolves? Curses? A forest filled with ancient and unspeakable evil?” He screwed up his face. “Ooh, no. Can’t _imagine_ what could _possibly_ go wrong.”

Sten, currently propped against a tree and watching the debate, rumbled darkly. 

“No army was ever gained with ease,” he observed, his gaze fixed on the centre of the Dalish camp. 

For all our busy argumentation, the mood among the wild elves seemed to have lifted a little. People criss-crossed between the land-ships, and although life in the camp was, in the light of day, clearly not normal, the looks some of the Dalish directed towards us suggested they thought we might suddenly be more than a suspicious inconvenience. There was a cautious kind of hope in some of those glances, which filled me with twin terror and awe.

After my arrival back from speaking with Zathrian, a little before dawn, a woman had even brought us breakfast. Bread, dried meat and fruit … it had seemed luxurious. I was mildly appalled that, now, we should apparently need to have this disagreement. Last night, pledging our help had seemed natural, simple… the only possible thing I could do. I  _knew_ it wasn’t simple, but it hadn’t seemed like a choice. This morning, I supposed I could have chosen differently. I wasn’t surprised it was causing ructions although, if I was honest, it hurt that Alistair should be the one to be wariest of the decision I’d confessed to making. 

“Sten’s got a point,” I said, perhaps a trifle sharply. “And we _will_ have an army, if the clans can be gathered. That’s worth it, isn’t it? That’s the whole point of what we’re trying to do, right?”

My friend faced me down, looking tired and grubby, his hair sticking out at odd angles like soft clumps of gold. Baggy smudges of fatigue were swiped under his eyes, and I wondered if they really had been there since Ostagar… and whether any of us could keep going long enough to see this through.

“Fine.” Alistair exhaled brusquely, shaking his head. “Fine, but… look, even if we _can_ help these people, are they going to be in any state to fight darkspawn? Can they even find the other clans?”

The words were like a slap in the face. 

I glowered at him. “What, you’d prefer we abandon them because they might not be useful enough?”

“I didn’t say that, and you know it! But—”

“I think everyone should calm down,” Wynne said, holding up her hands. 

Her quiet grace carried weight, and the gentleness of her voice held an edge of steel. That sharp, clear blue gaze danced between Alistair and me, and he heaved another sigh, this one full of theatrical resignation. 

“I’m not _not_ calm,” he muttered. “I’m just saying it’s a big risk. We nearly got ourselves killed getting this far… does anyone feel particularly eager to have another go at it?”

“We’ve almost been killed plenty of times,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “And I didn’t see you running from anything before.”

Alistair glared at me again, and every plane and angle of his face was set into a clenched grimace of frustrated irritation. I was about to let myself get truly angry with him— _bloody hard-headed shem, staring at the task in front of us with blinkers on, unable to see beyond Eamon and the sodding darkspawn_ —when I saw the look in his eyes. 

He was scared. Scared for me. 

I should have been comforted. I should have felt the affection in those muddy hazel eyes fill me up, because all I’d ever been raised to know of things between men and women was that a woman should be glad of a man’s protection. He was her shield and her provider and, if she did all she should, he would cherish her. My heart ought to have fluttered at this: my knight, my bastard prince, who was so much more than I was… and yet who, for some strange reason, seemed to care for me. 

Unfortunately, I ground my teeth, petulantly aggrieved at the thought Alistair didn’t believe I could do what I’d promised Zathrian. 

I let myself believe he thought me weak—and, of course, I knew I  _was_ . I couldn’t fight like him, or Sten. I had none of the skills Leliana or Zevran did, nor Wynne or Morrigan’s magic, and however far I’d come, I was convinced it was down to blind luck and a sheer bloody-minded refusal to die. 

But  _this_ … this was different. 

I was going to have my elven army, and I was going to cure the sick and heal the wounded, and we were going to march out of the Brecilian Forest with our heads held high, and our honour intact. 

And, just maybe, I would start believing that I could forgive myself for what Loghain had done to the alienage. 

“So? Why start now?” I asked softly. 

It was a cruel thing to say. 

Alistair’s brow furrowed, and the light in his eyes dimmed as he shrugged, looking to Wynne for support. 

“I’m not running,” he muttered bitterly. “I’m not talking about running. Just— I mean,” he tried again, waving one hand hopelessly, as if he was aware he couldn’t say a damn thing I intended to listen to. “Well… as far as darkspawn go, we know what we’re dealing with. Demons, we’ve had experience facing. We know what they _are_ , what they’re capable of. I just don’t know that charging headlong into this, completely blind, is a good idea.”

Morrigan tutted gently from her stance behind the fire. “One would think you were afraid, Alistair….”

“Shut up,” he said, without either turning or missing a beat. “I’m not— I-I just think that—”

“Werewolves,” I said flatly. “I doubt there’s much more complicated about them than teeth and claws. From what Zathrian says, this Witherfang creature may well be a demon… but you just said yourself, we have experience with those.”

Alistair’s expression tightened, but he couldn’t deny I’d scored a point. I was probably a little more smug than I needed to be; Father would have given me a clip around the back of the head and reminded me how smart mouths invariably got their owners into trouble. 

I turned to the others, my gaze passing over each face in turn. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again now: if you don’t want to follow, stay here. But I’m going to do what I told the Keeper I would. Anyone who’s with me is welcome to join the hunt.”

Sten pushed away from the tree against which he’d been leaning, and nodded curtly. “Finally. When do we begin this task?”

I inclined my head to the qunari. “Soon. Zathrian has offered us the hospitality of the camp, and access to what supplies they have. He suggested we restock, rest, then start the journey tomorrow morning. Apparently, the… creatures are more active at night, and one more day probably won’t make much difference to the sick.”

_Because this isn’t going to be a quick errand, and the ones that are infected are dead already._

I kept my thoughts to myself, and hoped my face didn’t betray them. Sten grunted, and I wasn’t sure whether it was relieved assent, or an aspersion on the keeper’s logic. I didn’t want to return to any details about the elves already dying in Zathrian’s makeshift hospital tents. I’d had to explain what I’d seen to my companions, and I’d left out the parts about the mercy of the healer’s knife sparing those about to turn, allowing my words to imply that sickness took them. I had no desire to think more of it… or to dwell on what might happen if one of us was bitten. In truth, I don’t think that thought had even sunk in; all I wanted was this one moment of leadership, to do this one thing that, in my addled mind, was both redemption and resolution. 

Perhaps it was the nights sullied with dreams, or the long weeks of hard travel with slim rations and the shadow of death at our heels. Perhaps it was the ghost of Soldier’s Peak still on my back. Whatever the cause, I would learn that a soldier’s logic should never be sullied with sentiment. 

“You know,” Wynne said, eyeing me carefully before she looked back at Alistair, “werewolves are beasts not unlike abominations. Possessed wolves driven mad… or so it is written. Perhaps this will not be so far removed from anything we have already encountered.”

“Great,” he muttered, with a sour glance at me. “Sounds as if it’ll be easy-peasy. Should we pack a picnic?”

Leliana got to her feet, dusting her palms against the deep russet brown of her leather breeches. “I think it will be an adventure. And, if there is even the slightest chance that we can help these people—and help them make good on the promises in their treaty—it’s worth it, no?”

I smiled at her, swelling a little more with pride at each vote of confidence. 

Morrigan sniffed philosophically, affecting a look of intense boredom. 

“I would not mind seeing more of the forest,” she said, ostensibly examining her fingernails. “In many ways, ’tis like the Wilds. There may be some interesting herbs that do not grow further south… and I should gladly take the opportunity to find some fresh meat that is neither rabbit nor half-chewed vole.”

Those last words were directed with a sneer at Maethor, and the hound whined quizzically from his scrape by the fire. My smile widened. Even if every last one of them had abandoned me, I’d known  _he_ wouldn’t. 

None of them would, though, would they? I realised that slowly, with a wash of proud, golden glee filling me. No matter how foolish or unbelievable it seemed, they had placed their trust in me. I was a leader, a warrior… their Warden. 

Words that had always rung hollow in my head seemed to take on new weight, new depth, and the rich taste of the power they gave me was a sweet, wonderful wine. 

“What about you?” I asked, turning to Zevran.

He’d seated himself on his pack, one foot crossed over his knee while he idly watched the debate. 

“Mm?” Those amber eyes glittered as they met mine. “You truly need to ask? Did I not swear my fealty to you, hmm? Your man, without reservation, even as we plunge headlong into the most idiotic danger?”

I snorted, and the half-hidden smirk at the corner of his mouth blossomed into a small, dark smile. 

“I don’t recall you putting it quite like that.”

“Eh, maybe not.” Zevran shrugged, giving a small, smooth, cat-like stretch as he rose to his feet. “Still, my original point remains unchanged: I will follow. Besides, I never was a one to walk away from the promise of treasure,” he added speculatively. “There will be treasure, no? An ancient forest, the site of a terrible war, wherein I imagine no one ever returned to retrieve any interesting artefacts?”

Alistair muttered something none-too-subtle about whether the grave robbing should come after the picnic or before, but not even his sulking could rupture my sense of achievement. 

In my mind, green shoots were already struggling forth from the ashes of the purge, and my head rang with the clarion shouts of an elven army. 

_**~o~O~o~** _

It pains me a little to write it, because no one likes to revisit the idiocies of their youth, but I was strutting like a bantam as we prepared ourselves. I felt brave and righteous, and full of my own importance… even more so when a young Dalish boy, perhaps no more than thirteen, came over to introduce himself as the apprentice of the clan’s crafts master. He wished to extend to us the offer of any supplies or repairs to our armour or weapons we might require, and it was a more polite and chivalrous invitation—despite the lad’s stuttering and wide-eyed awkwardness—than I’d expected. 

The clan were still wary of us, of course. Their open hostility had quieted to icy civility, but they didn’t trust us—and why should they, until we’d proved ourselves worthy of my fine words? Not that I doubted we could do it, for once. 

We would be ready, armed, fully primed… and we would be unstoppable. I believed it. After all, what worse things could werewolves do than abominations and demons? 

Having the whole day to make our preparations and plans was liberating, too. It had been a long time since we allowed ourselves real rest, and the promise of getting our gear fixed up was almost as appealing as the prospect of a good wash. Water would come from the brook near the camp , and we were given leave to take whatever we wished from such supplies as the clan had left. 

Lanaya came to show us to their stores, and introduce us to the elders who kept the wheels of life there turning; she suggested we speak with their storyteller, Hahren Sarel, and take what advice he had regarding the forest, as well as availing ourselves of Master Varathorn’s expertise. 

Obviously, I thought, the Dalish believed strongly in the truth of stories, as well as their own culture, and the power that legends had to shape the world. As the day got underway, and the prospect of charging headlong into the forest—to use the words of Alistair’s that had so annoyed me—grew clearer, the enormity of the task started to sink in. I wasn’t so sure that a few songs and tales would make anything easier, but at least the preparations gave us time to ready our minds as well as our packs and blades. 

The Dalish were still watching us closely, but Zathrian’s word had given us leave to move freely through the camp. I wondered, as I made my way down to the brook for water, glad of a moment’s quiet, just how far I had Daeon to thank for it all… and where he was. I hadn’t seen him that morning, or any of the young hunters he seemed to be so friendly with. 

When I thought back to the alienage, it was almost hard to believe it was real; that either of us should have travelled so far from our roots, or changed so much. And yet, we had—and he, like me, had achieved so much—but I still thought of those lost faces with mingled regret and shame. 

“Meri?”

My shoulders tensed at the sound of my name, the various assorted water skins and leather flasks I carried rattling against each other as I turned. I’d thought Alistair had gone with Sten and Zevran to survey the possibility of weapons or repairs, but apparently not. 

He lengthened his stride, catching me up easily, and I just stood there, full of awkwardness and mild resentment, telling myself that the look of apology on his face wasn’t enough to cut through my annoyance at the things he’d said. 

“Meri, hold on.” 

We were between the ranks of the elvhen’s wagons and the brook, a little downstream of where I’d intended to draw water. The stream bubbled cheerfully, and the golden light of a good, bright day filtered down through the half-bare trees. The ground was patched with coarse grass between the wheel ruts and mud and, above us, there was enough sky visible in the clearing to make out streaks of watery blue, with little wisps of cloud. 

Winter had not yet sunk its teeth into the forest, but the cold was coming. 

“What?”

I glared at Alistair, perhaps more ferociously than I’d meant to. His expression faltered for a moment—open honesty growing guarded and irritable—but then he regained himself, and the frown faded from his brow. 

“Look… you know I _do_ want to help these people, don’t you? All I meant—”

“I know what you meant,” I said crisply. “And you’re right, I suppose. We have to balance everything against the Blight. But if it means having the support of all the Dalish clans… we have to at least try, don’t we?”

He nodded, but there was a kind of discomfort in his expression, like there was something else he didn’t want to admit. I bit the inside of my lip, knowing what was coming. 

“Yes, but…. It’s just, with Eamon so ill—”

I saw red then. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was the idea of one shem noble being more important in his mind than the whole Dalish clan, or perhaps it was his very loyalty to Eamon itself, so stubborn and unyielding. 

Maybe I was just plain jealous.

“For all we know, he could be dead already,” I snapped. “And even if he _does_ recover, will he be well enough to address the Bannorn? You don’t know that, Alistair.”

He frowned, and it only made me angrier to realise how precisely I’d mirrored what he’d said before. I steeled myself, fully expecting him to use my own words against me.

_Would you prefer we abandon him because he might not be useful enough?_

They were written plainly on Alistair’s face, etched into every annoyed line of his scowl, but then he shook his head and the frown faded. He looked away, squinting into the treeline and, when he spoke, his voice was tight and low. 

“No, I don’t. But I’m hoping for it. He’s probably the only chance we’ve got.”

I disagreed, but I hadn’t the belly to fight about it. Not then, at least. I gritted my teeth and managed a grunt of assent that I hoped didn’t sound too grudging. 

Across the camp, I could see Maethor being approached by a couple of Dalish children. They were all gawky knees, elbows, and feral curiosity, and he stood waiting for them, wagging his stumpy tail and panting happily through those jaws that could crush bone.

No one ever had just one side to their nature, I supposed; we were all different things, bound up in ourselves and in each other. We were givers and takers, both blessed and sinning, and sometimes we found the best of ourselves in one another. Sometimes, it was within us, and it took as much bitterness as sweetness to bring it out.

My antipathy towards everything Arl Eamon represented—a faceless shemlen noble, a man who’d tossed aside the child that had grown into someone I cared for a great deal, and an as yet unknown quantity in the Bannorn—didn’t matter. In all probability, nothing would matter in the path of the Blight, army or no army… and I supposed we would all rather have faced our fate knowing we’d done things as right as we could. 

Still, compromise left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. 

“Look… as soon as this is done,” I said quietly, “we’ll go to the place Genitivi mentioned. And if there’s anything to find, we’ll find it. We’ll find _him_.”

Alistair nodded, and gave me a small smile. The dappled sunlight touched the gold in his hair, and made the hazel of his eyes look brighter and greener.

“And, if you get your way,” he said, a slight mischievousness in his face, “we’ll have an army at our backs. Darkspawn won’t be able to argue with that.”

I wasn’t sure whether he was making fun of me, but I elected to believe not. I shrugged. 

“It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

He snorted. “Yes. Yes… that it is. Right. D’you want a hand with those?”

Alistair gestured to the water skins I’d almost forgotten I was carrying and, when I nodded my thanks, he moved to help me with them. We made our way to the brook, and I knelt on the damp ground, holding the skins beneath the clear, cool, rippling current, one by one, until their bodies bulged and their necks were full. 

It was certainly a nicer way of drawing water than the daily trudge to the pump that a city-dweller like me was used to, and part of me was already idling in fancies of what life was like for the Dalish. The clan’s current predicament aside, their wagons looked comfortable, and they all seemed clean and well-fed and, but for a few details, perhaps the stories I’d gorged myself on as a child hadn’t been all that far-fetched. 

My fingers brushed Alistair’s as I reached up to take the next empty skin from him, and he smiled shyly. The last residue of my anger melted away, as if we’d never been at odds at all, and I realised how long it seemed since I’d last kissed him. 

I turned quickly from the thought, and concentrated on drawing the water. Alistair cleared his throat. 

“So… what do you think of Zathrian, then?”

I shrugged, and frowned at the bubbles popping in the stream. The water was clear as glass, flowing briskly over a bed of sand and rounded stones, and my fingers were gradually going numb with the cold. 

“He’s a very different kind of hahren,” I said carefully. “Lanaya said the keepers know magic, that they hold all the clan’s secrets. He seems wise… worried for his people, of course. But—”

“And the whole ‘curse’ thing?” Alistair prompted. “Werewolves? The ones who are sick… are they really…?”

“Just like I told you.” I nodded curtly, still not keen to revisit the things I’d seen in the hospital tent. “Why?”

I corked the skin I’d been filling, and passed it to him. He frowned thoughtfully as he gave me the last empty one, and glanced back towards the centre of the camp. It didn’t look like we were being watched or overheard but, where the Dalish were concerned, it was hard to tell. 

“Well, it seems… odd, doesn’t it? You said Zathrian reckons the werewolves are mindless beasts—like abominations, Wynne said—and yet they _ambushed_ the clan?” Alistair wrinkled his noise doubtfully. “To have done as much damage as they seem to, they’ve either got to be more ferocious than Morrigan at the wrong time of the month, or there’s something we don’t know. Either way, it feels… off, somehow, don’t you think?”

I fastened the last skin and straightened up slowly, shaking the water from my fingers. He had a point, but I didn’t plan on letting it sway me. 

“Maybe,” I acknowledged. “I think Zathrian underestimated them. I think that’s what he’s unwilling to admit. I think he believes he should have known an attack would happen… he claims to have known about the Blight for some time. I don’t know. I’m not familiar with whatever magic the Dalish have… and, sure, I don’t much like the idea of going up against possessed wolves, but—”

“We’ve faced worse,” Alistair finished, giving me an airy, sardonic little smile. “How hard can it be? As long as you promise me you won’t get bitten.”

It was a deftly plied blade of a thing, saying that. I’d barely entertained the possibility. I wasn’t stupid enough to think I was immortal or anything; it was just that, since Ostagar, I’d been on the edge of death every time someone swung something pointy at my head. For me, the imminence of battle was the difference between living and dying… never before had I considered the prospect of turning into something else. 

I shuddered as I recalled the dead elf Zathrian had shown me, with his crushed, mangled jaw and oddly distended teeth. 

“Promise,” I assured Alistair. “Nor you?”

“I’ll do my best,” he said, and the smile was all but gone from his face. 

We were close enough for it to be barely no movement at all when he reached for my hand. Beneath the grime, he smelled like new-split wood and apples, and yet when his fingers brushed against my knuckles, I flinched away like I’d been burned. 

“We should, uh, go see the craftsmaster. And we ought to speak to Hahren Sarel, too,” I murmured, glancing over my shoulder to the bustle of the camp’s centre. “If anyone knows more about what we can expect from the forest, he will.”

I didn’t dare look at Alistair. I knew I’d hurt him by the texture of the breath I heard him take, all stiff and stifled, and I wished so much that I was braver. I wished I hadn’t been so stung by his loyalty to Eamon, and that I didn’t feel the unseen eyes of imagined Dalish ancients upon me, etching insults into the breath of the breeze.

“Right,” Alistair said, and the leaves crunched underfoot as he took a step back, a step away from me. 

I was glad of it. Stupidly, terribly glad. Easier that than to endure the looks I was afraid of seeing on the elvhen’s faces, or the feelings of guilt and recrimination that gnawed at me. 

The water skins sloshed in the awkward silence as I gathered them about me, and headed off towards the camp. 

_**~o~O~o~** _

Meeting Master Varathorn was an education. He turned out to be one of the most civil and welcoming of the Dalish that I’d met, probably because he barely seemed to notice anything outside of his work. 

He made all of the clan’s equipment, from bows to blades, armour to tiny, beautifully carved amulets. When I got to his wagon, I was surprised at the amount of industry going on, despite the sickness and travail that had struck the Dalish. There was a charcoal kiln set up in the shade of its sail, and great expanses of whetstones, hammers, tools and all manner of works in progress were strewn about the place. The boy from before—apparently just one of Master Varathorn’s young apprentices—was being soundly berated for mistreating a bow he’d been trying to make, and he cowered like a puppy under the white-haired elf’s fierce glare. Like all the other adult Dalish I’d seen, the craftsmaster bore intricate tattoos on his face, and the lines were worn into his weathered, sunburned skin, as if he’d been born with them. Pale amber eyes peered out from beneath a huge, bushy pair of eyebrows, and there was a saggy, sunken look to his face that gave him an air of sombre sincerity. I was just glad I wasn’t on the receiving end of the tongue-lashing. 

Sten and Zevran were already perusing the goods, Zev wheedling information easily out of another of the nervous-looking apprentices… nervous, I imagined, because they’d probably never seen a qunari before. 

Leliana was there, fondling a shortbow with breathless reverence, and quizzing one of the young elves about heartwoods. She smiled cheerfully at our approach, and we were drawn into the throng, for all the world as if it was a busy market day, with gossip and chatter floating like pennants between the traders’ stands. 

I learned more about Dalish weapons and armour in that short time than any book or quartermaster could ever have taught me. Master Varathorn, once you got him going, had some very strong opinions on everything that was wrong with human-made work… which was how I came to find myself at the centre of a group of three apprentices, with the craftsmaster gesturing disdainfully at my leathers. 

“This is exactly what I was talking about! You see this? The cutting is all wrong. This is typical shoddiness. The shemlen do not think of hide as _skin_ , but as something that may be cut and shaped like parchment. Not to mention these… alterations,” he added dubiously, looking at the trimmed-down parts of my jack, and the clumsy straps that held the human-sized pieces of clothing in place over the greyish gathering of material that might once have been called a shirt. “What is this padded with?”

“Horsehair,” I said, wincing at Master Varathorn’s look of appalled distaste. 

“No, no… all wrong,” he muttered, his rough, bowed fingers curling in a gesture of dismissal. “Come. I don’t have much left, but you must take what will be of use.”

I tried to protest, but it didn’t get me anywhere. It seemed as if the craftsmaster had taken my cut-down armour as a personal insult, and he didn’t rest until we were all outfitted with the most serviceable items he had left in his stores… well, most of us. Leliana’s polite and knowledgeable interest in the weapons the Dalish favoured most had apparently allowed Master Varathorn to conveniently forget she was human and, though his armour was only sized for elven frames, he was happy enough to gift her a bow and a quiver full of those short, dark-tipped arrows. The tooling on the leather was the same kind of swirling, intricate design I saw all over the camp, in everything from the tattoos to the shapes painted on the prows of the landships… aravels, I learned they were called. I picked the word out when one of the craftsmaster’s apprentices—a young boy, one of three crowded around me and carrying on snippets of several conversations at once in a strange, hard to follow patter of Common and broken Elvish—was sent to fetch a bundle of leatherwork from inside. 

“Ara…?”

“It means ‘journey’, or something very like it,” Zevran said, doing his favourite trick of apparently materialising behind me. “ _Thing that is for the journey_ , perhaps. There is a degree of flexibility in the translation.” 

I looked over my shoulder, feeling somewhat exposed in the grubby shirt and breeches I’d stripped to while I waited for the spare jack I’d been promised. I thought ruefully of my first outfitting at the quartermaster’s store back at Ostagar, and the press of eager chaos as countless soldiers jostled for the supplies. It had been the first time I was treated with respect at the camp—clutching Duncan’s promissory note in front of me like a shield—and I’d walked out of there with my head held high, believing I was dressed like a Warden, or at least a soldier. Of course, I had no such ticket to respectability among the Dalish, however much I wanted one… and there was very little chance of me looking half as at home as Zev did. 

He still had most of his Antivan leather on—the ornate chestpiece, the same fringe of metal-tipped plackets at his thighs—but he wore Dalish bracers now, and guards on his upper arms and elbows… plus shoulderpieces, breeches, and a new, wider belt, all with the same Dalish designs tooled into the leather. The hide was dyed, like much of their leatherwork, and its deep, burnished copper colour brought out the gold in his skin. He smiled casually at me, apparently enjoying his new finery, and all the attention that came with it. 

“They do us remarkable honour by this act, you know,” he said, lowering his voice. “You are aware it is your fault?”

I turned to face him, grimacing warily. Behind him, I could see Master Varathron engaging in earnest, terse discussion with Sten. It looked as if the elf was genuinely curious, trying to work out how to equip someone so very different to his own proportions. Alistair stood sullenly near where Leliana was still chattering about bows, and I looked away quickly before he had time to meet my eye. 

“How come?” I asked, turning my attention back to Zevran. 

He smiled again, and it was the glimmer of a softly drawn blade. “Ah…! They are talking about you already,  _corragiosa_ . You might not be of the Elvhen, but they like the story of what you did to the human lord.”

I winced, and my stomach tightened. “Vaughan? I only told Daeon what—”

Zevran shook his head and tutted incredulously as he cast a look toward Master Varathorn’s aravel, from which one of the boys was emerging with a bundle of leathers. 

“Indeed,” he said, leaning in as another apprentice slipped past us, and a cruel kind of mirth marked his features. “However, I think the tale grows bloodier with every whisper.”

“Oh,” I said despondently. 

And there I’d been, thinking it was the noble gravitas of the Grey Wardens’ reputation that had convinced the clan not to turn on us. 

_**~o~O~o~** _

The craftsmaster wouldn’t accept any gesture of payment for the odds and ends of armour, weapons, and running repairs he made to our gear. That was just as well, really, as we didn’t have much to offer. I knew Zevran had some trinkets salted away from Soldier’s Peak, but it seemed the Dalish had as little use for old scrolls or silver inkwells as they did for coin. In fact, I worried I’d offended Master Varathorn by trying to pay. 

The elvhen, I learned, operated by barter… when they traded at all. Mostly, the clan did things for each other because they  _were_ clan. Everyone had their place, their role, and they fulfilled it in the secure expectation that every other elf would do their share, and thus everybody would have their needs met. Within it, as with all places and all people, there were friendships, rivalries, and favours passed around, but the usual rhythms of life were clear. 

Sten seemed strangely comfortable with it, noting tersely that the elves’ ways were ‘not entirely senseless’, though he seemed to have little sympathy with their plight. Certainly, he didn’t appear to approve when I agreed to look for ironbark in the forest. It was Master Varathorn’s suggestion—not quite a request—and I wasn’t entirely sure whether it was the payment he expected for what he’d given us, or a genuine plea for help in the hope we were as skilled as Zathrian’s apparent confidence in us suggested. 

“We are forbidden us from going any further in,” the craftsmaster explained, with a trace of something in the words that wasn’t quite disdain, but ran rather close to it. “I suppose Zathrian has no choice, but it makes things very difficult. If I _had_ ironbark, I could make more supplies—you know, properly fashioned, it yields armour light as air but strong as steel—but we have lost too many to the werebeasts already, without risking those who are left. If they go, there is no one to protect the clan, after all, and there is no point in making armour for dead men.” He sighed dismally. “Perhaps Hahren Sarel is right, and we will have no choice but to flee to the north.”

The others, all except Sten and I, had drifted away from the craftsmaster’s domain, duly furnished with whatever he could give them. We two were the last, me having adjustments to my new jack (a piece belonging to one of the dead hunters, which had been in for repair—I very much hoped  _not_ immediately after his death—and, with a little cutting down, had been persuaded to fit me), and Sten waiting patiently while the gaggle of apprentices carefully rebound the hilt of his broadsword and repaired his boots. 

“It is curious,” he observed, ostensibly to himself, yet clearly aware that Master Varathorn could hear him, “how they so easily choose to run from trouble.”

Not for the first time, I was stunned by Sten’s lack of tact… although I supposed I shouldn’t have been. If knowing him had taught me anything about the qunari, it was that they apparently had no purpose for sparing anyone’s pride. 

The craftsmaster took it well, however, and just snorted.

“No,” he said tartly. “There is no ease in such a choice. But, it is hopeless to fight.”

“It is never hopeless,” Sten retorted, those startlingly bright eyes flashing in his dark face, like chips of quartz caught against rocks. “Not while you draw breath.”

The old elf smiled bitterly and handed him back the newly repaired broadsword. 

“I truly wish you well, stranger,” he said darkly. “And may you not live to wish those words unsaid.”

Sten muttered something in his own tongue. I didn’t understand it, though I did make out the word ‘parshaara’ which, by that point, I had guessed meant something more or less akin to ‘enough!’. I wanted to apologise for him, anyway, but there seemed little point. Master Varathorn was done with us, and Sten had barely strapped his boots back on before he was striding off back into the camp, and I had to quicken my pace to catch up. 

“That was—” I began, but I gave up when the look on Sten’s face told me just how futile any attempt at criticism would be. I sighed, and gestured vaguely at his blade. “They did a good job on your sword, anyway. Maybe be a bit kinder because of that?”

He scoffed: a deep rumble, right at the back of his throat. “Kindness? To overlook faults, to ignore weakness? That is merely foolish. It is no benefit to be made blind to inadequacy.”

That great, craggy brow folded in on itself, and Sten scowled at the damp grass. His braids hung loose against his chest, their stark white grubby and greyed next to the dark leather and splinted mail he wore. We’d been promised a chance to bathe somewhere downstream, once we’d familiarised ourselves with the camp, and I imagined we were all looking forward to it. 

Even if we died stupidly in the forest, at least we could do it smelling relatively fresh. 

“In any case,” Sten added, glaring at a tussock on the dappled, clean-swept ground, “this is not my sword.”

“What?” I blinked, and looked in confusion at the sheathed blade slung over his back. “Sten, it’s as much yours as—”

“No. It is not my sword.”

I stopped, letting him put a couple of paces between us as I tried to wrap my mind around what he meant. He halted, and looked back at me impassively. 

“I don’t understand.”

“No,” he said, his tone lightening just a little, as if my evident stupidity amused him, albeit with some bitter kind of aftertaste. “You would not.”

With that, Sten stalked off, leaving me to stand there in my second-hand leathers, mouth emptily framing a few choice cusses.

_**~o~O~o~** _

It had been a very long time since I’d had anything that resembled as much free time as we were granted in the Dalish camp. Fair enough, most of it was to be put to good use either resting, restocking, or finding out whatever we could about what might lie ahead of us, while the sombre tenor of things—not to mention the tents full of the sick and dying—prevented any sense of real relaxation or festivity. All the same, I started to unwind just enough to realise how much my muscles hurt. All the fatigues and niggling pains the past few months had piled up seemed to seep back into my consciousness, and it felt as if I’d fall apart if I stood still long enough to think about it… so I didn’t. I mingled, as far as the clan would have me, and probably made a fool of myself asking questions so simple they would have shamed a child. 

I learned a great deal, though. I learned that the Dalish did not speak their own language as completely as it first seemed, and that Elvish itself appeared to be more of a mix of Common and reappropriated words than anything, but I did glean a clutch of new words. I started with ‘aravel’ and soon added ‘vallaslin’, for the tattoos that the Dalish bore… though I quickly discovered that they were sacred, and no one liked talking about them with an outsider. 

Some of the clan made no secret of not wishing to speak to me at all. They moved away before I approached, or brushed me off with the fewest words possible. Some of the men looked at me like I was an aberration, especially wearing cast-off Dalish armour. Some of the women just stared with a mix of revulsion and pity, and I didn’t really understand why. It wasn’t as if Dalish women didn’t fight, after all. My thoughts turned briefly to Alistair, and I hated the guilt and shame that rose up in me, and found myself quietly glad that at first glance around the camp I couldn’t see him. 

As far as I could tell, the others were all doing the same as me: making the most of the opportunities we’d been given.

I found Morrigan on the other side of the brook, toeing through the plants that clung to the muddy banks and seizing on handfuls of straggly, pale green leaves. She glanced up at my approach, recognition rapidly giving way to irritation. 

“Oh. ’Tis you.”

“Herbs?” I asked, nodding at the plants she was gathering. 

She grimaced. “No… I am picking pretty flowers for the sheer delight of it. Mayhap I shall weave them into a crown and declare myself a princess.”

Her yellow-gold glare narrowed like a knife, but it didn’t faze me. If anything, it made me think she was glad of my company, however silly that seemed. 

I gestured to the bundle of thin stalks she held. “That’s woundwort, isn’t it? I don’t know that one.”

Morrigan held out the damp little plant she’d just plucked, and I leaned in to get a closer look. It had wide, wrinkled leaves and small, star-shaped white blossoms with pinkish centres… rather like the flower I’d gathered for the kennel master back at Ostagar, except this one smelled faintly of pondwater and cat piss. 

“Lesser Healspeed, the Wilders call it,” Morrigan said, as I screwed up my nose at the smell. “We do not use it much, though I am surprised to find it this far north. Perhaps because the summer was mild. It is a poor substitute for the greater kind, but most potent in certain healing potions. Of course, the Dalish have scoured this place of almost everything usable… yet they seemed content to let me forage.”

She tucked the herbs into one of the leather pouches at her belt, and I allowed myself a small smile. Even as fierce as the Dalish presented themselves to be, it was hard to picture anyone telling Morrigan she couldn’t do something. 

“Maybe your skills can help them,” I suggested, at which she gave me a very withering look. “Knowledge from a different place, or…?”

“The old woman has already insinuated herself,” Morrigan said dryly. “I have been given leave to gather and brew, but I doubt my potions will be of use to the elves. Better take them with us, lest we meet more in the forest than werebeasts.”

She said it with a grim kind of certainty that made me want to shudder, as if she knew exactly what was awaiting us. I didn’t push for details, and I let her wave me away with the pretence of irritation, crossing back past the brook and into the body of the camp.

The great curved shapes of the aravels shaded everything, with their half-folded sails, their proud hulls and high, arches wheels. Three children peered out at me from behind one: a grubby, feral little group, with wide eyes and sharp, knowing faces. They stared at me unabashed when I caught them looking, and after a moment’s suspended breath and tension, burst out from the landship’s cover and pinwheeled into a run, scrambling over each other in their haste to dart away. The oldest—a boy with coarse blond hair falling to his jaw and eyes the colour of spring skies—turned back and cat-called a word at me before pelting off in fits of breathless giggles. 

_Seth’lin_ . 

I didn’t know what it meant, but I guessed it wasn’t complimentary.

The sound of footsteps on the leaves behind me made me turn… or, more precisely, the sound of someone deliberately finding a dry leaf and a couple of twigs to tread on. I smiled. 

“Are you trying to make me feel better about my ability to pick out a target?”

Zevran chuckled softly and shrugged. “Well, you complained of my stealth, no? A gentleman always put a lady at her ease.”

I opened my mouth for the obvious riposte, saw the look on his face, and shut it again abruptly. 

“That’s… very gallant,” I said instead. “Been busy?”

He gave another small shrug: a slow, cat-like flexing of the muscles beneath his half-Antivan, half-Dalish leathers. 

“Not as busy as I’d like,” he said, looking past my right shoulder in a pointed manner. 

I glanced behind me and, following Zevran’s gaze, I noticed a young, dark-haired elf standing by one of the aravels. He hadn’t been there before, I was sure. Ostensibly, he was inspecting the wheel rims, and not looking at us at all… but I knew dissembling when I saw it. 

“Who—”

“Shh.” Zev hushed me with barely a twist of his lips, and continued to watch the elf from beneath hooded eyes. “It would be a crime to frighten away something so lovely, no?”

His words were almost a whisper, but I wondered if the elf had heard them, because he glanced up, looked fleetingly embarrassed—or as near it as I suspected the Dalish were able to be—and moved to the other side of the landship. Zevran just smiled, and I blinked, a little surprised by his open, calculated admiration. The elf  _was_ handsome, in that very Dalish way. His hair was almost black, a heavy fall of braids and locks pinned at the back of his head, and his skin bore the rough, weathered look that most of the clan had, though it was pale enough for the sinuous lines of his tattoos to seem very dark against it. 

He wore leathers, but not like those of the hunters. They were still of that exquisite Dalish make—dark, oiled hide, tinted to shades of grey and green and tooled with the swirling shapes of vines and spirals—but they weren’t as intricate, and his shoulders were capped with a rough, fur-lined cape. 

He was still watching us… or, at least, watching Zevran. I shrugged, not much caring for the sense of being a crass intruder on a private moment, and somewhat unsettled by the feeling that Zev had been chasing him across the camp like a deer. 

“Well, I should probably go and… um….”

“Yes,” Zev murmured. “Yes, you probably should. I shall see you later, yes?”

He wasn’t even looking at me, and I found the predatory set to his face a bit unnerving. This wasn’t playfully flirtatious Zevran, who passed time on the road annoying Wynne with bosom jokes, or calling me beautiful just to see the colour I turned. 

I took my leave, but glanced over my shoulder as I went, just in time to see the assassin hunting down his prey. There was something measured in his stride; a carefully calibrated seducer, I thought, noting that the boy just straightened up, standing his ground and smiling as Zevran approached. 

Apparently, the elvhen held discoveries for us all.

_**~o~O~o~** _

The prude in me was a little embarrassed as I walked away, quickening my pace. I had thoughts of heading to the hospital tents to see if Wynne had found any success in speaking with the healers—she had seemed so quiet and tense since we’d come to the camp, and I suspected the gruesome nature of the curse had upset her—but I was waylaid by an elf with jaw-length red hair and an anxious expression. 

“Ah!” he exclaimed, his palms pressed together, and thick, rough-hewn fingers curled around each other. “Forgive me. I was hoping I would have a chance to speak you with you, stranger.”

I blinked curiously, a little intimidated by the heavy, angular tattoos on his face (stupidly so, given the striking looks of my companions; amazing that I could travel every day with Sten beside me, and still find anyone daunting), and the wide, pale green eyes that stared so hopefully at me. 

“Um…?”

He bent his head, and when he next spoke I realised his voice lacked that crisp, clipped delivery so many of his clansmen had, as if he was more used to the common tongue than they were. His clothes were different, too: a thick, woven shirt, fur-lined cloak and boots, and serviceable leather breeches, but not the garb of a hunter. If he hadn’t been Dalish, I’d have thought he was a tradesman. 

“My name is Athras.”

“Merien.”

Those pale eyes flickered for a moment, and my stomach started to sink. All right, so my naming of the mabari hound had been off, but did my own name mean something stupid in Elvish as well? I dreaded to think. As far as I knew, I’d simply been named for my uncle Merenir—which, admittedly, wasn’t the most auspicious connection in the world—and Mother had once told me that the root of the word meant something like ‘brave’ or ‘strong’, but that probably wasn’t true. If it meant anything at all, I just  _knew_ it wasn’t going to be complimentary. 

Athras didn’t say anything, though. He gave me a small smile, and glanced nervously towards the centre of the camp. 

“I… I hope my people have not been too harsh in their treatment of you? We do not encounter many outsiders, but it is good to see another elf, even if you’re not of the clans.”

No one like a Dalish for back-handed compliments, I thought ruefully, but I shook my head. 

“Not at all. Everyone has been quite, um, accommodating.”

“Good.” He looked relieved, and his hands came unclenched, though he still held them cupped together. “We welcome our brethren, even if they have forgotten the old ways. That is our charge, after all: to keep the old lore alive until we can bring it back for all… but this is not what I wished to speak to you about.”

“No?” 

Athras looked down at his heavy knuckles, and seemed tempted to worry his fingers together again. He had the hands of a carpenter, I thought, or a smith. 

“I understand you will search for the wolves in the forest,” he said quietly, casting a sly look across the camp… in the direction of the keeper’s aravel. “You are seeking the white wolf?”

“We hope to help, if we can,” I said, perhaps a little more guarded than I needed to be. “Why?”

The elf rubbed one broad thumb anxiously against his palm, like he was struggling with something that shouldn’t be said, and yet itched to come out. 

We were already quite a way from most of the aravels, but he took a few steps to the side, closer to the shade of the treeline, and implored me to follow with the pained look in his eyes. The earthy smell of the forest seemed to rise up from the pines, marking more clearly than ever the strange dichotomy of this place: both within the Brecilian Forest’s bounds, and yet not truly inside it. I’d never known there were so many degrees of forest. I’d thought it was either dense trees or nothing, not these cycles of copse and clearing, ringed around the dark heart of the forest like mayflies kissing the surface of a river. 

I followed Athras, and waited patiently for his tale. 

“I am not a hunter,” he said, as if disclosing something shameful. “I make… crafts. Furniture, such as we use, and tools. But, when the ambush came, I fought the werebeasts—and so did my wife, Danyla.” His face softened, and yet great pain marked his expression. “She has far more skill with blade and bow than I, but she was gravely injured in the attack.”

“I’m sorry.”

Athras nodded his acknowledgement, but he was frowning at the sparse grass between us, staring back into Maker alone knew what horrible memories. 

“Zathrian… demanded that those who were injured be kept apart from us. To protect us, he said,” Athras added, both bitterness and suspicion running coldly beneath the words. “He told me there was nothing he could do—just ease her pain. He said she died, but he won’t let me see the body. He… he refuses to let us see the bodies.”

I said nothing. Would I want to see the corpse of a loved one, already half-mangled by so vile a curse? No doubt the first few to be infected had turned completely, before the healers established the last safe point between drugging and killing the poor bastards. 

The very real threat that awaited us began to tug darkly at my mind, and I tried to tell myself it was no different to the ever-present danger of being ripped apart by darkspawn. Death was death, however it came. 

“The thing is,” Athras went on, urgently now, looking at me as if I somehow held answers, “I think there is something more to it. I think she… she _became_ one of them, and I think she got away.”

“Got away?” I echoed incredulously. This was beginning to sound like the desperate hope of a bereaved man and, though my heart went out to him, I saw nothing I could do for Athras. 

“Maybe.” Those pale green eyes found mine again, and his gaze almost shook with indignation. “I think Zathrian is telling us all what he believes will stop us chasing off into the forest, and I _know_ he wants to protect us, but…. He has forbidden everyone from entering. The hunters, the craftsmen—how are we meant to feed ourselves, or gather supplies? Besides, I… I found this.”

Athras reached, fumble-fingered, into a pouch at his belt, and pulled out a soft roll of fabric. He passed it to me with a kind of reverence, and I saw it was a scarf, of the kind I’d seen some of the Dalish women wearing. They were beautiful pieces of embroidery: finely woven fabric in a dark, mossy green, with patterns of delicate vines and flowers picked out in a lighter green thread. Elven stitchwork had been well known in the market in Denerim, and our needlewomen were sought after—even if ‘seamstress’ was frequently a less-than-subtle euphemism in certain parts of the alienage—but this put the best embroidery I’d seen to shame. 

“This was your wife’s?”

Athras nodded. “I found it yesterday morning, behind our aravel. Just… just over there.” He turned, and pointed to a small landship at the fringe of the camp. A spinning wheel and small treadle loom sat on the grass near its steps. “You see? What else can I think? Anyway, it may sound foolish, but… but I  _know_ she is alive. I am sure of it. I… I would know if she was dead,” he finished quietly, his voice choked somewhere between certainty and blind, determined hope as he stared at the scarf I held. “You know, don’t you,” he murmured, “when someone you love is gone? I… I think you understand what I mean.”

“Yes,” I said thickly, wondering how far the story I’d told Daeon had spread through the camp—bloodier with every whisper, as Zevran had said—or whether it was just branded on my forehead. “Yes, I do.”

And yet, did I know? A little seed of doubt settled in my mind then, though I did my best to ignore it. I didn’t  _know_ what had happened to anyone back home. Soris, Shianni, Valora, Taeodor… any or all of them might be dead, or they might have missed the worst that soldiers could do. I doubted it. After everything that had happened, I couldn’t believe Shianni would have been all right—not after the way I’d last seen her—and my heart was an open wound when I thought of my father. He’d never seemed an old man before that day, but I knew what had happened had all but broken him. It seemed impossibly optimistic to believe he could have survived a second purge… but I hadn’t felt it when it happened. I hadn’t believed, until we set foot back in the city on that ill-fated day, that what I’d done would have such repercussions. 

Against my ignorance—a badge I’d all too bloodily won—I found Athras’ certainty unnerving, but I didn’t argue. 

“Look, I can try to seek her out, if she’s in the forest,” I suggested. “And maybe I could speak with Zathrian. It does seem as if the werewolves are not as mindless as he believes. If—”

“No!” Athras widened his eyes. “No. Zathrian is very, uh, firm of purpose. He will not listen to… speculation. Better that you just look, if you are willing. I will be greatly in your debt. Please, take the scarf. If you find her—even if she _is_ dead, or worse—just knowing would bring me peace. I don’t have much, but I’m sure I can find something to—”

I shook my head. “I don’t need a reward.”

Athras clasped his hands afresh, and bowed clumsily. “ _Ma serennas_ , Grey Warden. Thank you. I will wait… and I will not tell anyone what we have spoken of.”

The agreement lingered wordlessly in the air, and Athras excused himself as I tucked his wife’s scarf carefully into my scrip. 

I watched him lope cautiously back to his landship, and wondered at just how much Zathrian was keeping from his clan. 


	8. Chapter 8

During the afternoon, I finally got my bath… or near enough. We took turns standing knee-deep in the cold water in our smallclothes, downstream from the camp, and sluicing anything that became available before we started to shiver too much. Wynne, Leliana, Morrigan and I went first, and when we headed back up to the camp we were still flushed with the chill of it, bright-eyed and breathless.

Leliana had spent part of the day in the halla pens with Hahren Elora and, evidently enraptured by the beasts, was explaining to us how they were so much a part of the life of the clan. Elora had told her how they pulled the aravels, but not because they were beasts of burden, like the horses, oxen, or mules used by humans, but because the halla themselves consented to assist. Of course, that had struck a chord with Leliana, and she appeared to be a breath away from penning some kind of song about the spiritual, enigmatic beauty of the creatures.

I wasn’t sure about that, but I did know that the smell of their manure was apparently pretty hard to scrub off.

In any case, I hadn’t seen much of them; just big, pale creatures that looked a bit like I imagined stags did and, being a child of the city, I’d never seen _them_ outside of the occasional book, tapestry, or carcass hanging on a trader’s stall for feast days. I was wary of the halla, anyway, sacred part of Dalish culture or not. They looked large and muscular, with great twisting horns that could probably gore, and their round, lowing calls seemed to throb right through my head. I’d stayed well away. 

Leliana enjoyed chattering about them, though, the same way she liked to talk about everything. Her way of reaching out, I supposed, as we ducked back to our tents to tidy ourselves up. She asked me if I wanted her to braid my hair, and looked a little disappointed when I politely declined. I sat on my pack and watched her busy fingers thread through her own red tresses, making twist after twist and tiny braid after braid, the thinning afternoon light catching dust in its glances as it touched her. She was humming. She was always humming, then, and she seemed oddly cheerful for someone caught so far out of where she should be… and oddly cheerful for someone about to head into the teeth of the forest.

I glanced over my shoulder, hearing Sten and Alistair returning from their own brief wash and brush-up. No Zevran, I noticed, although that wasn’t entirely surprising. I gave them a brief smile in greeting, anyway, and tried to pretend it wasn’t so easy to watch them… or, rather, to watch _him_. Either way, I couldn’t help wishing I’d been born just a little bit different.

**_~o~O~o~_ **

For the evening, we had been given leave to join the clan at their great fire, and there was a slight sense of formality to it, as if the Dalish were both gathering to pay grudging respect to those who were willing to risk their lives for them, and to gawk at our idiocy. Zathrian wasn’t in evidence, though many of the clan were already sitting around the fire as dusk began to draw in, and while they set and kindled the flames, I got my first look at the man who was clearly the master of this particular ceremony.

Hahren Sarel was the clan’s keeper of stories. I thought I knew what that meant. I thought he’d be the same as our Valendrian, who had always spread wisdom, peace, and tolerance with his words, countering every story of Halamshiral—the tales we’d clamoured to hear as children—with a cautionary moral maxim, or an improving extract from the life of Andraste.

He’d kept us safe that way; moulded our minds when we were young with the subtle threads of belief that told us it was better, somehow, to submit and acquiesce. He’d made it seem like it was our culture that he was sharing, but it wasn’t. The stories Valendrian had told under the shade of vhenadahl were a pale reflection of elven tales, just as the tree—the great tree that I remembered reaching higher than the walls themselves—had been revealed as a stunted sapling from the first moment I laid eyes on the Brecilian Forest.

Sarel, too, was a vibrant figure, wild and striking. I couldn’t tell his age. He had enough wrinkles for a man in his middle fifties: old, by alienage standards, or at least old to be unbowed and as hale as he seemed. He was still broad and strong, and his hair hung loose and uncombed, a mane of dark coppery auburn salted with silver. His brows were thick and wiry, a little darker than the hair on his head, and they seemed perpetually knitted in an incipient scowl, as if nothing about the world was good enough for him. His whole face had an angular, tightly drawn look, set against heavy features, with wide, strong ears, and large, ice-blue eyes. His vallaslin comprised several intricate designs, all whorls and jagged, thick sweeps of earthy colour that served to make his pale stare seem all the brighter, as if he could read the thoughts on the inside of a person’s head.

He wore thick furs and greasy looking leathers, with a heavy grey cloak wrapped around his shoulders, and a large round pin securing it, the metal worked into a shape that looked like a vine leaf… and if his glare could have set fire to the air, we’d all have burned alive.

He pointed silently to one of a few heavy logs that had been dragged close to the fire. The several elves who were drawing near sat either on them, or in scrapes in the dry earth near the fire, or on small, three-legged stools—the kind of thing I supposed Athras made—that they seemed to bring from their own tents and landships. One log had been left empty for us, I saw; we were to be kept carefully contained, maybe even on show while we were allowed to view the gathering.

I nodded politely, and we made to take our seats. An air of quiet intensity hung over everything, and expectation painted the rows of faces I saw looking towards me. Maethor, who had been padding quietly behind me, settled himself near my feet, and I was glad of his presence. The hound’s muscular, broad back was something comforting to look down at when I felt unsure of the Dalish’s stares.

Children sat amongst them. Not many, but quite a few. They were watching us too; and they were proud, wild little beasts, almost all unafraid of the strangers in their midst. Looking at them gave me a brief pang of homesickness.

Nearby, a young elf with short-cropped blond hair, and the traces of puppy fat still rounding his face, kept casting hopelessly yearning looks in the direction of a pretty redheaded girl who sat the other side of the fire. She appeared either not to notice, or to be ignoring him.

Like before, Leliana sat on the ground, near Wynne. She had her legs folded neatly under her, and the red of her hair caught the reflection of the fire that some of the younger elves were already kindling. I hadn’t missed the echoes of Dalishness she so delicately presented—her bow, her braids, her quiet obeisance—and I suppose I resented a little the fact that she seemed to know what to do. They didn’t appear to dislike her for it, anyway, or to view her as a shem with pretensions to understanding them. She just… blended in, more or less, but for her unmistakeable human qualities. I noticed just how much then, and I envied Leliana that talent, almost as much as I envied Zev his effortless connection with the wild elves; a connection I guessed he was still busily deepening, because he wasn’t with the rest of us.

Even Morrigan had deigned to join us. She wrapped herself tightly in her robes and sat on the far end of the log, her staff clasped firmly in one hand, her whole body tucked and tensed in such a way as to suggest she was trying to let as little of herself as possible come into contact with the world. Once she’d taken her seat she barely moved, except for those yellow eyes, constantly appraising and surveying the gathered camp. Sten was equally terse and silent. He squatted beside the log, the way he usually hunkered down in front of his tent flap and, as ever, he reminded me of some kind of carved sentinel, with the firelight catching at his dark skin and haunting it with shadows, casting a faint orange glow across his pale braids… like he wasn’t real at all; a motionless statue, a mountain from which untold wrath could crack, and yet slumbered silently, just waiting.

Something sprung unbidden into my mind then: a dream, or an imagining, or some dark breath of foreboding. Dragon’s Peak as we’d seen it on the road from Denerim—a black shape against a dark grey sky, too far away to even look like a mountain at all, too far for its weight and breadth to seem like anything more than an illusion. Maybe _it_ was waiting, too; waiting for the other dark shape that lived in my dreams and reared up out of the shadows, screaming with the fire and anger of ages.

Maybe there was a whole other world beneath our feet, and it would break free from the rocks and the earth, and scatter us all in fire. Maybe it was inevitable.

I blinked, pushing the thoughts away. They were nothing, I told myself; just worry, and tiredness, and this gnawing sense of being so far from safety. Maethor groaned softly and put his head on my boot, so I reached down to ruffle his ears.

As I glanced up at the others, I noticed Wynne watching me with what appeared to be mild concern. She raised her brows very slightly, and I shook my head, signalling that I was fine. Although she probably didn’t believe me, she didn’t press the issue… but I saw the look that then passed between her and Alistair. There was a world of communication that those two shared, and sometimes it made me very slightly irritable.

All around the clearing, younger elves busied themselves with the chores of the coming night. I recognised the routine, in some strange ways; their equivalents of sweeping out the floors, fixing the supper, battening the shutters and making sure the elders were comfortable and the children clean and behaving properly. It was a warped echo of things I was used to, and it made me want to look away.

That was when I noticed the way that Hahren Sarel was watching us. It was a half-frown; a stare of open hostility tempered only with the kind of curiosity found in someone who loves stories. He might have hated our presence there, I decided, but it was less Zathrian’s word stopping him from leaping up and cutting us open, than it was the desire to know our tales.

I wasn’t really expecting the hahren to speak to me. Perhaps he caught the way I was watching the women work, or perhaps he just wanted to pick a fight. Either way, every word that passed the man’s lips seemed like a challenge.

“So,” he said, his tone clipped and hard, “you are all Grey Wardens?”

That icy glare flickered over us, and Morrigan snorted loudly.

“A Grey Warden? I? Bite your tongue, storyteller!”

Her voice dripped with venom, but Sarel merely peered haughtily at her, as if she was just some inconsequential follower of ours. Despite the blossoming fire, I could have sworn the temperature of the clearing dropped a good few degrees.

I cleared my throat hurriedly. “Uh, Morrigan is a… er… a Wilder, elder. From the Korcari Wilds, to the south. Um. This is—”

“A Sten of the Beresaad,” Sten interjected, as the firelight danced across his face, the unbound fall of his braids shifting against his chest when he moved his head. “Not a Warden.”

“Neither am I,” Wynne added, leaning forward a little to smile graciously at the hahren, as if she hadn’t even noticed his hard demeanour. “My name is Wynne. I am of the Circle of Magi. It is a pleasure to meet you… I admit, I never thought I would ever set foot in a Dalish camp!”

Sarel’s expression remained unchanged, though I saw one thick brow rise very slightly. Wynne meant well, I knew, and her enthusiasm was as genuine as her desire to help both the surviving Dalish and their injured, but she had yet to see that—to these people, with their pride and their years of isolation—it seemed like the bookish curiosity of a scholar, and nothing more.

Leliana was no less awkward, for all her innate grace and charm. I bit the inside of my lip as she smiled winningly at the elf.

“I am Leliana, and I am no Grey Warden at all, but I am so honoured to be here; I've heard so much about your people.”

The great fire cracked and popped as one of the young women fed it another armful of dry twigs, and the smell of crisp bark and hot sap melded on the cool air with the dusty beginnings of the evening, and the mustiness of earth and bracken.

Sarel looked steadily at Leliana, his mouth a hard curve just shy of a sneer, and the flamelight stained the ground between them. She kept smiling beatifically, but it was a shell just as hard as his; glass and porcelain, like I’d so often thought of her, and I noticed how pale and bright her eyes seemed.

I blinked, aware of Alistair attempting his own clumsy introduction.

“I’m one, though. A Grey Warden, I mean. Um. Yes. Alistair. Pleased to meet you. Nice, uh… campfire you have there.”

He gestured hopelessly to the great fire, and I wanted to put my head in my hands. It was a strange thing, to feel so close to those people—the people I’d travelled with, fought with, risked my life for and been saved so often by—and yet to be so embarrassed by them. They truly were the closest thing I’d ever have to a family, I supposed… and that thought wasn’t precisely a comforting one.

Hahren Sarel’s nostrils flared slightly, and he gave Alistair a withering look all the more devastating for the fact it was accompanied only by cool silence.

Alistair coughed nervously. “Uh…. We were at Ostagar, Merien and me. Where the darkspawn first attacked. We— well, that is, Meri… um. We’re the only Wardens left,” he finished awkwardly, shooting me a worried glance. “As far as we know, anyway.”

“Hm.” Sarel eyed me suspiciously. “I have heard your tale. Your clansman, Daeon… he speaks well of you. Between that, and what we hear of your deeds to date, perhaps you will best the beasts that brought this curse upon us. Or perhaps you will die trying.” He shrugged, and tugged his cloak tighter around his shoulders, turning his face to the firelight as he did so, his profile a blade against the dull orange flare of the flames. “Either way, it makes little difference.”

I said nothing, because clearly nothing I could say—even pointing out that Daeon was no blood of mine, whatever he’d said to Zathrian in my defence—would have won me any sympathy from the storykeeper. His bitterness laced the air with the heaviness of thick perfume, and he scowled at the fire as if it held all the blame the world had spawned since Arlathan.

“Well… if we _can_ help you,” Alistair said uncertainly, “I mean, that would—”

If I’d been sitting any closer, I’d have kicked him.

We were interrupted, however. One of the younger elves—a girl probably my age, with a thick braid of dark blonde hair hanging down her back, and fresh vallaslin etched into her cheeks, the ink still a vibrant blue-black, and her skin still slightly scabby from it—brought around bowls of soup. I saw something of the kind of etiquette I was used to in the gesture: we were served first, because we were guests, and she made a point of not quite staring, peering up through her lashes as she pushed the carved wooden bowls into our hands. She had large, leaf-green eyes flecked with amber gold, and a wide, smooth forehead unmarked by the tattoos. A small wrinkle had lodged itself there; a kind of half-frown, like she wasn’t sure whether she liked serving us or not.

I thanked her, anyway, as we all did. The soup was rather watery, but it smelled good. There was wild garlic in there, and I could identify things that looked like potato, carrot, and maybe even meat floating in between the delicate fronds of whatever herb gave it that aromatic, spicy fragrance. My stomach growled, taking the wait while the hahren and the assembled elves were served as a challenge.

To my left, Morrigan sniffed her bowl suspiciously, though the Dalish appeared to ignore the insult. As we ate—supping, certainly in my case, quick and eager mouthfuls from the shallow, carved bone spoon—I watched the rhythms of the camp’s life unfold, and began to understand something of the customs their nights held.

They were like us or, rather, we were like them, I supposed, because they were closer to the ancients than my people were… and I was coming to the realisation that, for the Dalish, elven and _elvhen_ were indeed two completely separate things. It’s hard to describe how that made me feel. At the time, I thought I was just chastened; a little crumpled and sore because part of me had really wanted to believe there was going to be some kind of homecoming for me among them. It wasn’t until later that I would understand how much that idea had meant to me… or how much I would have done in the name of acceptance.

In fact, it would take me a long while to realise how foolish I had been.

Still, they fascinated me. I saw familiarities in the little things—the way the Dalish sat, the groups in which they moved or spoke. The hahrens were the pillars of their community, their leaders and advisors, and they were just as stubborn and old-fashioned as city-bred elders, by the looks of things. Then there were the hunters. We didn’t see as many of them as I expected the clan comprised; most of those still in the camp were the younger men, and a couple of seasoned, grey-haired veterans, stern-faced and pitted with scars. Old or young, these were the men who had been left to guard the clan’s more vulnerable members—inasmuch as anyone could have called any Dalish defenceless—and there certainly seemed to be a degree of resentment bubbling over it. The Dalish _being_ Dalish, of course, it was buttoned up and kept away from us outsiders: there was only an undercurrent of disquiet, hiding behind the words and the suspicious, tight-drawn faces.

They treated their women a little differently than I was used to; that much I did understand. As far as I could judge, they still cooked and cleaned and healed, but there was absolutely no taboo about women fighting or carrying arms.

I watched one young, blonde elf squatting near the fire, glaring thoughtfully at Alistair across the flames, with her mouth twisted into a small, hard curve of undisguised suspicion. She wore leathers like the other hunters’—like Mithra, though she looked a few years younger—and her hair was a wild mass of braids tied with feathers and beads, her face scored with a delicate, intricate pattern of vallaslin that seemed light as lace. Her pale blue eyes caught the firelight and flung it back, until they appeared to blaze with it, and she seemed to me the single proudest, most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.

I didn’t stare, though. It would no doubt have been just as rude among the Dalish as it would have been back home… and, besides, the way she watched Alistair made me uncomfortable. No matter how conflicted I was, I still felt bad about the way so many of the Dalish treated him. They looked at him like he was a shem—which of course he was—and it just riled up all the complexities and contradictions I’d been picking at since… well, how long had it been? I wasn’t even sure.

I sneaked a glance at him in the burnished orange of the firelight, and he looked flushed and on edge, his attention ostentatiously buried in his soup bowl. For some reason, I was reminded in sharp, sudden, vivid detail of the night after the battle at Redcliffe, when we were all so elated to be alive, and we got really rather drunk in that grubby little tavern. I remembered Sten being unusually loquacious, and the militiamen’s bawdy drinking songs… and Alistair and I stumbling down the cliffside to the chantry in the small hours of the morning, shushing each other and snorting with ill-suppressed giggles.

Maybe it had been then. Maybe before, maybe later. I couldn’t tell. I didn’t know… and it didn’t matter, amid all the violence and death and terror that was spilling over the world. All that mattered, I supposed, was what we had to do. I should be thinking of that—of the Blight, and the treaties—above my own wishes, my own desires, and any ill-advised entanglements that went along with them.

And yet, a little part of me still bristled like an angry cat when I watched that beautiful Dalish girl staring at him. I sat drinking my soup quietly, seething with bottled up envy and resentment and yearning… and I almost didn’t hear when Leliana started asking questions of the storyteller.

“So, is it true that the Dalish are the last guardians of Arlathan’s tales?” She leaned forwards eagerly, blue eyes wide, ready to be graced with the bounty of Sarel’s knowledge. “I spent many years in Orlais, and I often heard mention of the history and legends the elven people had collected. You must have such interesting stories about the Dales!”

I wasn’t sure whether she was genuinely intrigued, or trying to coax him into some kind of competition. Sarel looked at her with wary disdain, then shrugged.

“We guard our knowledge, yes, and we seek to understand and safeguard our history. From this comes many tales… but Arlathan?” He snorted, his lip curling into a bitter sneer. “Even those of us who keep the ancient lore have no record of what truly happened. What we do have are accounts of the days before the fall, and a fable of the whims of the gods.”

Well, that was like throwing a steak in front of a mabari. Leliana’s face lit up.

“Oh! Still, I am sure—”

“ _I_ thought ’twas the old Imperium that crushed the elven states,” Morrigan interjected darkly. “No god needs interfere where soldiers tread.”

The cooling air was full of glittering Dalish eyes, and anyone less bold than Morrigan would surely have quaked beneath their stares. She didn’t even seem to notice, and went on calmly with her soup.

“The human world changed,” Sarel said, his voice a taut edge between the fire and the shadows, carrying with it the cadence and strength of a storyteller. “Even as we slept. Gone were their clans and tribes, and up rose the empire of Tevinter. We do not know why they wanted to conquer Elvhenan but, when they breached the great city of Arlathan, they came with magic, demons, and even dragons at their behest.”

He’d told this story before, many times. I could see it in the way the firelight painted his face, and in the way the Dalish that were gathered around the flames settled into the rhythm of his words. Some closed their eyes, their meals done and their bowls cradled in their laps. Some nodded or murmured to their companions as they ate… and a few of the children sat with wide eyes and starry faces, their minds evidently full of glorious battles and fire-breathing beasts.

Sarel took a breath, allowing the silence to settle into the cracks and pops of the fire. He was merely warming up, I realised: his answers to Leliana’s clumsy questions were a performance as much for his own people as for her. A snide, unkind smile danced at the edge of his mouth when he looked at her, the flames throwing dark rings beneath his eyes.

“Yes, the shemlen marched upon Arlathan, destroying homes and galleries and amphitheatres that had stood for innumerable ages. Our people were corralled as slaves, and worse was to come.” His smile split into a grimace, showing white teeth against the dimness. “Contact with the humans quickened our blood… stole our years. We lost our immortality.”

_They dragged us down to the mud with them…._

Ah, yes. A familiar cry from my childhood, that one. The things people would say after too many beers, and one of the ragged truths we’d so tightly clung to: that we were, somehow, intrinsically _better_ than shems. We were lither, quicker, cleverer… and they were clumsy, slow and stupid, with their sweating and their shunting, and their dull souls. _We_ had once been so much more, and through those cruel comparisons, we could blame every shortcoming of our lives on the things the humans had taken from us.

I concentrated on spooning up the last of my soup, until I’d practically gouged a hole through the bottom of the bowl.

“It is said,” Sarel went on, “that the _elvhen_ called to their ancient gods, but there was no answer, for Fen’Harel—the Dread Wolf and Lord of Tricksters—had wrought a terrible treachery upon the world. He went to the ancient gods of good and evil, and proposed a truce. The gods of good would remove themselves to heaven, and the lords of evil would exile themselves to the abyss, and neither would ever again enter the other’s lands.”

A murmur went around the campfire. Stories were important for the Dalish, as I would learn. Tales and ancient things beat in their blood… and they needed to believe that as earnestly as, where I was from, we paved the slums with the belief that we had better standards than humans.

“But the Dread Wolf is a trickster,” Sarel said, his voice low and venomous, the fire beating against the lines of his vallaslin until they coiled like snakes on his face. “Fen’Harel feasts upon the trust of fools, and though they had trusted him, and treated him as a brother, he betrayed the Creators. By the time his falseness was laid bare, he had sealed both realms, and neither the gods nor the Forgotten Ones would ever pass into the mortal world again.”

There was more nodding of heads, more closed eyes. I could almost taste the belief in the air.

Morrigan scoffed. “’Tis no more than an excuse!” she said acidly. “And a weak one at that. _This_ is the reason you give for the loss of your lands?”

A moment of silence followed, into which her words rang like dark bells. The fire cracked, and I was convinced the night was going to end with our bodies skinned and slung over the lowest boughs of the nearest tree.

Sarel eyed the witch steadily. “It is a fable, to be sure, but those elves who travel the Beyond claim that Fen’Harel still roams the world of dreams, keeping watch over the gods lest they escape from their prisons. I’m betting you are not unfamiliar with the strangenesses of this world, Lady. Would you say you can answer every mystery yourself?”

Morrigan glared at him, but the hahren simply smiled.

“Whatever the case, Arlathan had fallen to the very humans our people had once considered mere pests.” His gaze lingered a little on her, and that same small, hard smile touched his mouth as he turned his head away, casting a look across the gathered elves. “The world had turned anew, and we had to face it, with or without the Creators. _That_ is how we came to join with the army of Andraste.”

The mere sniff of religion seemed enough to put Morrigan off. She grimaced, but she said nothing, and just tugged her cloak tighter around herself in a rustle of disdainful annoyance and raven feathers.

Leliana, on the other hand, looked almost fit to explode with glee. “Oh, yes! You know, I have read _all_ of the Canticle of Shartan… everything about the elves’ part in Andraste’s Exalted March. It is such a wonderful story!”

I winced as I set my empty bowl down by my foot. Maethor stuck his nose in the bowl and busied himself cleaning out whatever scrapings I’d missed. I nudged him with my toe, but the sorrowful look he gave me meant I really didn’t have the heart to tell him to stop it. I didn’t have the heart to say anything about Exalted Marches, either… though I was all too well aware that the Chantry had not exactly been a friend of the Dales, and I doubted Hahren Sarel would share Leliana’s reverence for the Holy Prophet.

Certainly, he was giving her a dark look, his mouth drawn into a tight line, when Alistair cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“Er… ye-es, but I think that was probably, um….”

I looked along our ramshackle seating arrangements, and he caught my eye, mugging hopelessly as Leliana utterly failed to heed the warning.

“It was so noble,” she went on, apparently oblivious to Sarel’s dryly arched brow. “Such a powerful unity. I mean, we all have to face terrible threats together, don’t we? Just like the Blight.”

I wasn’t much of a one for praying, but I really hoped she wasn’t going to mention her vision.

Hahren Sarel sniffed eloquently. “It is the shemlen who name that woman prophet,” he said, his voice laden with steel. “We knew Andraste as a war leader: one who, like us, had been a slave and dreamed of liberation. Yes, we joined her rebellion. Those who had been trodden beneath the shemlen’s feet rose bravely with her, and became her vanguard. They were our heroes, and they died beside her, unmourned, in Tevinter bonfires.”

Leliana inclined her head, seeming to realise her mistake. “Oh… well, of course. I mean—”

“But we stayed with our _so-called_ allies,” Sarel went on, raising his voice over the murmurs of the elves and the cracking of the fire, the anger glowing like embers in his eyes. “We stayed until the bitter end. And we had our reward. We had a land of our own—the Dales, in the south of what you call Orlais,” he added dismissively. “And we made the Long Walk to our new home, to Halamshiral, ‘the end of the journey’; our capital, our place beyond the reach of the humans. We came across deserts, across oceans… and we would crossed the Beyond itself for that place. It was to be somewhere we could once again forget the incessant passage of time; somewhere our people could begin the slow process of recovering the culture and traditions we had lost to slavery… but even then, it was not to last.”

That was the part of the story I knew best, the part that Valendrian had always emphasised the most: how elven pride and the refusal to tolerate human interference had resulted in the skirmishes that marked our doom. I bent my head and studied my hands, suddenly uncomfortable with some tone or sense in the hahren’s voice. Tension seemed to linger in the air around us.

The firelight played along the darkening ground, and the night seeped into the edges of everything. My knuckles looked clenched, like bare bones beneath the freckled skin, which had grown rough and loose, patched with wrinkles and the signs of wear. I’d never had a lady’s soft, delicate palms, but  they’d not been washerwoman’s paws… and now they were becoming the hard, sword-callused hands that ought to have fitted a soldier, and I wasn’t _that_ , either.

“Of course,” Hahren Sarel intoned, with a hard, unpleasant edge to his tone, “it did not last. Your Chantry, not content with letting us be, sent missionaries into the Dales. We threw them out. We wanted none of them. We just wanted what Andraste had promised us: our freedom. The freedom to return to the ways of Arlathan.”

“But….”

I glanced up, hearing the disappointment crack in Leliana’s voice. The light seemed to fade in her face, and the flames of the great fire sent shadows skittering at the corners of her eyes and down her cheeks. They made her look older somehow, and tired… as if, in that moment, her belief faltered a little.

“But that wasn’t—”

“The templars came then,” he said, and I wondered if he was actually enjoying it. There seemed to be a dark kind of glee in the storyteller’s face, whipping beneath the lines of his vallaslin. “Soldiers of your Chantry’s whim, filled with hatred, and they scattered us just as the Tevinters did. Halamshiral burned, Andraste’s promises broken, and our people were left with nothing.”

I heard the soft clink of buckles as Alistair shifted uncomfortably, and I was grateful for the fact we hadn’t mentioned his association with the templars. Vows or not, it would have made things immeasurably worse.

Leliana looked wounded, as if the hahren’s distaste for the Chantry was a direct personal assault… which it was, for her, I supposed. Strange, because she knew all too well how the machinery of faith could turn against someone. Her time in Lothering—for all the secrets she still held from me then—had not been without argument. I wanted to say something then, to intervene somehow or set Sarel’s tormenting down a different track, but I didn’t get a chance… and it wasn’t my place anyway. I knew that when I saw the look he gave me, his mouth already wrapping around cruel words.

“We did as we always done. We _endured_. Some took refuge in the cities of the shemlen, living in squalor, tolerated only a little better than vermin—”

My spine stiffened slightly, but I said nothing. I had begun to see how different the Dalish thought themselves—how different they truly _were_ —and it was useless to pretend they accorded my kind the respect I’d imagined they would. Maybe we deserved it. Maybe the shems were right, anyway. Maybe the Dalish were right, and we were weak. Maybe we were weak for submitting, and weak for all our subservience and careful quiet, and weak for not being more like _them_.

I lifted my chin a little, looking into the fire’s warmth and the glowing hearts of the logs that smouldered red at its base. I looked until the light reflected back so brightly into my eyes that it hurt, and I blinked, hoping to see Daeon’s face in the gathered elves beyond the flames.

He wasn’t vermin to them. He’d crossed the bridge, become one of the clan… he was earning their respect and their loyalty. Perhaps, I thought, I could do the same.

I blinked, my cheeks warmed by the fire, and looked away. Hahren Sarel was reciting a particularly florid description of the _elvhen’s_ “self-imposed exile”, and the Dalish safe-guarding of the remnants of elven knowledge and culture.

Leliana still looked upset. She hugged her knees, and the firelight glimmered on her braided hair as she worked her lips over a protest.

“But…. Forgive me, but the historians all agree that the elves were not blameless. Chantry historians, perhaps, but… but you cannot deny there were tensions on both sides. The Chantry did not attempt to exterminate your people, nor attack them from spite!”

Wynne placed a hand on her shoulder, in some blend of comfort and restraint, but Leliana didn’t appear to notice it. I was fairly convinced this was going to blow up into a full-scale fight but, to my surprise, Sarel chuckled, and there was as much amiability in it as bitter mirth.

“My, my… such faith you have. Oh, I am certain we played a part in our own downfall. Such is usually the case.” He shrugged, and cast a guarded look around the fire. “Perhaps we believed the shemlen would not revoke their prophet’s gift so lightly. Of course, we were wrong. Yet, what did we do to anger them? One attack on a human village, and the Chantry army marched. They took our lands, forced us to abandon our gods and left us living as beggars in filthy shemlen cities.”

I bit the inside of my lip, my mind full of the memories of front steps cleaned to a shine, and Mother washing down our table until the wood was white with scrubbing. But, why would they understand?

“You should have fought,” Sten said.

I hadn’t expected him to speak, and I looked along the log in surprise. He had turned from gazing into the fire, and he was regarding Sarel with an impassive stare tinged, I thought, with just a little of that bored qunari disapproval—a kind of tedium for his kind, probably, because nothing ever seemed to match up to the way _they_ ran life.

Hahren Sarel raised his eyebrows, evidently distracted from baiting Leliana even further. “Oh?”

Sten grunted. “You should have fought to the last of you. Better that than to submit.”

The storyteller’s face flexed into a mask of dark amusement, though I could see the firelight glimmer on cold fury in his eyes.

“Indeed? Is it not the qunari way to force _others_ to submit? Surely fighting would not be your advice to my people, were they attacked by the mighty qunari.”

I cringed inwardly, seeing visions of body parts strewn across the camp, and the treaty we’d had such fond notions of seeing honoured hung on a nail next to the bushes the Dalish used for a privy.

Sten narrowed his eyes. “That would be different,” he said, with an element of consideration I had only heard from him infrequently before. His upper lip twitched lightly… possibly the nearest he ever got to a smile. “The qunari would improve your people, storyteller. The humans have improved upon nothing.”

A complicated silence fell, during which it seemed likely either laughter or war would break out. I held my breath, wishing I had something to say. Sarel was still watching Sten, with a kind of curiosity in his face that made me think the qunari would end up in a story of his own before long. It was Alistair who broke the silence, though, leaning forward and clearing his throat.

“Right. Well, we’ve… um… we’ve established that, I think. But the thing is, ser— _elder_ ,” he corrected, with a quick, sly glance at me, “we’re here for the Grey Wardens, and the Wardens aren’t just humans, or elves, or dwarves… we stand outside race, outside politics. We have to, because there’s one thing that threatens everyone, and that’s what we stand against.”

There was an echo of Duncan in his words but, from the look on his face, I thought Alistair probably felt he hadn’t done his mentor justice. All the same, I was proud of him… and a little shamed by him. I should have spoken up, put my voice to that unity of races, and yet I hadn’t even thought about it. I’d been so preoccupied with the Dalish, and my own nature—and my fantasies of a new Garahel marching under the banner of an elven army—that perhaps I’d even started to forget what had drawn us here.

The forest can do that to a person. You get so hedged in and choked with trees and vines, until their roots start to worm their way into your head, and every blurred path or dead end is another set of briars snatching you down inside it.

Sarel looked consideringly at him, and the tension around the fire seemed to deepen, taking on a new complexity as the gathered elves watched in silence. I wasn’t sure what they made of Alistair. Maybe they’d been expecting him to protest, to argue the rights of humans and the Chantry’s interpretation of history. Either way, the Dalish watched their storyteller and, when he spoke, his words were careful, clipped, and they hung over the fire like smoke.

“And yet, _Grey Warden_ , you offer to enter the forest and seek the heart of Witherfang. This task our Keeper would give you… this is not your sole purpose, your ‘one thing you stand against’.”

Alistair looked momentarily discomfited. He glanced sidelong at me—whether for reassurance or answers, I didn’t know—and the firelight ruddied his skin, catching the gold in his hair and turning it red. I thought of Cailan then, with the dying sun flaming on his gilt armour, and I wondered if any of us were truly determined by our blood, human or elven… Dalish or flat-ear.

“Well, no,” Alistair said, turning to meet Hahren Sarel’s gaze. “But some things are just right, aren’t they? Your people need help. Anyway, Merien’s decision is good enough for me. She leads us,” he added, and I felt a shiver go around the fire.

I was grateful he didn’t look at me then. Many of the assembled Dalish did, and I suddenly felt very small and very awkward. It was a very public affirmation of faith… and maybe more than faith… and though it swelled me up with pride, it also scared me.

Sarel was watching me—so many people were watching me—and the firelight seemed to splinter around my feet. The weight of their gazes hung on me, full of expectation and quiet opinion. I didn’t know what they thought. I didn’t _want_ to know, maybe.

Instead, I leaned in, my shoulders square, and kept my voice as clear as I could as I met the storyteller’s eye.

“We mean to do the best we can, elder. But perhaps… perhaps you know better than most what lies within the forest? We are not so hide-bound we wouldn’t humbly accept your advice.”

It was a little formal, a little awkward—a clumpy kind of way of asking for anything—but it made the boundaries clear. I’d tried to, anyway, and I couldn’t do more than that. It was what I’d done since the beginning: put myself in between things, and try to hold the calm together.

Hahren Sarel regarded me coolly for a few moments, his eyes guarded and the flamelight shading along the planes of his cheeks. Then he scoffed, somewhere between a dry chuckle and a snort of derision, and the pale blade of a smile split his face.

“I know a few stories, you may be sure,” he said, with quietly burnished pride. “Our legends say that the Brecilian Forest was a place of our ancestors that predated even Arlathan. It was the shemlen who gave the place its name.”

I frowned. “There were elves here? Settled?”

“Who knows?” Sarel shrugged and, leaning his head to the side, cast a look around his audience. The brief moment of silence was a punctuation to the story that, in his hands, became a masterful piece of emphasis, a stroke of meanings unsaid and tales that were yet to be told.

“If there _were_ ,” he went on, edging forwards a little, as if he was imparting something secret to us, “those elves were either slain or enslaved. We know only that a great many battles were fought here; these trees grew upon the graves of those who fell—shemlen and elvhen both.”

He raised up one hand, fingers spread against the silhouettes of the trees. Nightbirds called in the far branches, and the darkness seemed to slink around us, as if the shadows had life and form. I suppressed the urge to shiver, glad of my cloak when I suddenly felt so cold.

Wynne nodded thoughtfully. “Battles that… tore the Veil?”

The young women tidying up, busying themselves collecting up the bowls and the detritus from the finished meal, and feeding more kindling to the fire, stirring up sparks and the whispers of ashes. Some of the Dalish had begun to drift away from this central place in the camp, back to their own aravels. Mothers were taking the smallest children to bed, and it heartened me to see a few of the older ones pleading in earnest murmurs to be allowed to stay up; obviously, we weren’t the sort of thing that happened often in camp, and sitting up to stare at us was a far more inviting prospect than going to bed.

“Very wise of you, I’m sure,” Sarel said, shooting the mage a look of mild annoyance. “Death has a way of ripping up all that is real. Such are the legends that speak of Witherfang. An ancient spirit, passing freely into this world, seizing the form of a wolf… and passing on its curse of rage.”

“A rage demon,” Alistair muttered. “Great. Well, at least we’ve dealt with _those_ before.”

The hahren’s brow crinkled, but he hid his surprise well, and I didn’t give him the opportunity to delve into any questions. The Dalish had their own ways where magic and superstition were concerned. That much was clear to me and, while they didn’t spit and cross their fingers at the mention of demons, like the old men in the alienage, I doubted that going into any great detail over the Circle Tower would help us.

“Witherfang is old, then?” I asked, trying hard not to think of Sophia Dryden’s withered corpse, held together mostly by the armour she’d died in, and corrupted by the demon that had taken her. “I mean, if the legends go back so far….”

Sarel nodded. “Yes. Zathrian insists the wolf still lives. He says Witherfang does not age as the werewolves do. The creature spread its curse to the shemlen, and thus it has come to us, but Witherfang endures. It is as much spirit as beast… immortal, perhaps. Perhaps it cannot even _be_ slain. At the very least, it is old and powerful, much as Zathrian himself.”

Something about the way he said those words reminded me of Athras, and I was curious as to how deep Zathrian’s bond with his clan truly ran. In the short time we’d been in the camp, I’d seen the terrible loyalty his people had to him, but it was tainted with a kind of awe… as if they really believed he was _more_ than them somehow. It was a very different kind of respect and, just as I’d said to Alistair, he was a very different kind of hahren. I told myself it was because of the magic. Keepers had secrets to hold and dark things to watch against. Their role was far more mystical than the tussling with city guards and bureaucrats that Valendrian had occupied himself with… and yet I found myself thinking of our hahren more than ever. There was a warmth in his guidance—even when we were children, strapped across the backs of our knees for disobedience, or cuffed alongside the head for misbehaviour—that I missed, and that I wasn’t sure I could see in the Dalish way of being.

Were they really so very different?

To my left, Alistair let out a small sigh of frustration and ran a hand over his hair, frowning as he seemed to chew over logistics.

“All right. So… this _thing_ has been out there for Maker only knows how long. And it’s never spread the curse to your people before?”

Sarel glanced across the fire. The clan kept late evenings, apparently, though I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were clinging to the flames, keeping some kind of quiet vigil against the dark, while their sick lay dying… waiting to be taken either by the curse, or the healer’s silent blade.

“No,” he said softly. “Only the shemlen. When they lived here, the curse would spread anew to a few of them with each passing year. They would run off into the forest, howling with anger and shame. Eventually, they abandoned their villages. The forest consumed the empty places, as it does. We thought we would be safe… from them, and from the curse. But we were wrong.”

Leliana spoke up then, for the first time since Sarel’s acid denunciation of the Chantry. She was still sitting by Wynne’s feet, her arms hooked around her knees, and the firelight made her eyes look like turquoise glass bathed in gold.

“Was it long ago that the humans left? If it has been many years, perhaps there are few of the werebeasts left.”

He gave her the kind of look an impatient father gives a child that is full of foolish questions, but I could see the pain that sluiced behind his eyes.

“There were enough to nearly destroy us all. Enough to kill us… to kill my wife,” Sarel snapped, turning his face to the darkened tree line, as if he could lose the words there. “And my son.”

Awkward solemnity hung in the air. Expressions of condolence seemed empty, especially when they would only break against the wall of his bitterness. Leliana tried anyway, and there was true empathy in her voice… which probably just served to make the storyteller angrier.

“Oh, I am so sorry. I—”

“One _assumes_ ,” Sarel said sharply, cutting her off with a dark look, “that the creatures survive by passing their curse to their offspring. They have had no new blood… until now, that is.” He snorted derisively as he glanced towards the distant shape of the hospital tent. “Zathrian maintains none of the hunters have turned. I doubt that. Since the attack, I have seen one or two making for the forest’s heart, already more beast than elf. The rest of the sick will follow; either die or turn. It calls them: the curse, and the wildwood. It is the savage nature of the beast and, make no mistake, the forest _is_ as a thing alive.”

He was staring at the fire again, as the flames broke higher, rising on the dark red embers and the sap-strong flush of fresh wood. The night air had grown cold, and where some of the clan had returned to their wagons, others had come to join the circle. A sense of expectation seemed to settle over them, and I watched Hahren Sarel’s hard, sharp profile carve a line through the shadows, his eyes hooded as he watched the leaping, dancing sparks.

“It changes as it wills,” he said, as if rolling the words of a long-cherished story around his mouth. “Paths close behind you, and new ones open up. Oh, yes… the forest lives. And, were I you, _Warden_ , I would endeavour not to make an enemy of it.”

He glanced at me then, and the mix of hostility, pain, and anger in his face frightened me, and yet filled me with sorrow. I knew loss, and I knew violence, but I’d suffered neither the way Sarel had. At that moment, the world seemed to hold nothing but new ways of inflicting horror on a person, and I wished we’d never tried to enter the forest, much less agreed to a plan that appeared more hopeless by the hour.

But I couldn’t admit to that, even if I’d wanted to. No matter how hopeless the plan, I was the one leading the charge. That still seemed crazy to me and yet, for the first time, it felt real, and right… like something I could do, not because I’d simply found myself thrown into the waves of a tempest, but because I had accepted the storm, whether it was my destiny to float or drown.

“Thank you, elder,” I said, inclining my head politely. “That seems like very good advice.”

He snorted. “Aye. And much good may it do you.”

Movement stirred at the edge of the gathering, and I looked over to see Zathrian emerging from the direction of his aravel and drawing near the fire, his robes bundled up around him and his face tired and drawn. A couple of the young women bustled about him, and a space was made for the Keeper to sit close to the flames.

Zathrian settled himself, holding out his palms for warmth. He nodded at us politely, and I heard Hahren Sarel’s soft exhalation of breath.

**_~o~O~o~_ **

The Keeper’s arrival at the fire marked a change in the evening. The strained atmosphere seemed to crack, tension leaking from the air, and it was as if the elves still gathered around us seemed comforted by Zathrian’s presence. It was a ritual, of a kind, I supposed. He would come and join with his people, like a king holding court, and it soothed them.

There were traditions, too. This, we discovered, was the time for stories… stories, and skins of elvhen mead, which was decanted into small wooden cups and passed around with great reverence. The first went to Zathrian, and then Lanaya, and the hahrens. Then, the veteran hunters, the elders and the craftsmen, and then the apprentices and the clansmen and, finally, with words of thanks from Zathrian for the help we had pledged the clan, we were offered cups of the clear liquor too. It smelled faintly of honey, and tasted like fire and turpentine. I gathered from the looks on some of the Elvhen’s faces that the honour we were being accorded was not universally approved of, but their Keeper had spoken, and we all managed not to splutter or cough our way through the quiet, ceremonious sipping… although I did think, at one point, I might choke. Sten seemed to actually like the stuff; I heard his quiet grunt of approval as he drank it down.

The moon had risen, though it was hard to see it behind the trees. Ragged shades of cloud painted the sky, black on dark, like shadows swimming between the points of the stars.

Sarel was to tell a story. Zathrian requested it, and the hahren responded graciously. It was, I realised, another ritual; another way of reaffirming the bonds of clan and blood that the Dalish so depended upon.

I did not, however, expect the way that it moved me.

“Aye, I shall tell a tale,” Sarel said, raising his voice so it carried to the edge of the circle. “Listen, and I shall tell the greatest tale of all!”

It was a call that demanded an answer, it seemed, for a soft susurration ran through the gathered Dalish, and Sarel nodded approvingly. He placed his hands on his thighs, elbows out like an old man beginning a lecture, and leaned forward, until the firelight’s reflection gleamed on his face. He was different then to the way he’d been when he was talking with us. This was a story that performed: a tale that lived and breathed through him as he gave it shape. I had never been so close to a piece of elven history before, but I touched the face of it in Sarel’s story.

“As it was told by Gisharel, Keeper of Clan Ralaferin, blood of my blood and my birth, I tell it to you. This is the tale of Elgar’nan and the Sun; the tale of Mythal’s Touch; the tale of all that was and came to be… and of the light that comes where darkness falls.”

As if on cue, the fire leapt up, and sparks spiralled in the dark air. I glanced up, and saw Daeon and some of the other boys from earlier, sitting on the far side of the circle near where Lanaya was perched on a small stool, dwarfed by her voluminous robes.

“Long ago, when time itself was young, the only things in existence were the sun and the land.” Sarel raised his clenched fist, showing the sun, and held the other flat, fingertips to elbow a line before him that marked the land. The movements were slow, deliberate… a pantomime he’d played a hundred times before, I imagined, and yet every eye there was fixed upon him. “The sun grew curious about the land. Day by day, he bowed his head closer to her body—” His hands moved, fist uniting with fingertips and then both palms pressing together, before splaying out in a slow, almost hypnotic gesture. “—and Elgar’nan was born in the place where they touched.”

A small, collective sigh left some of the gathered elves, and it pooled in the silence Sarel left, painting pictures with the gaps between his words.

“The sun and the land both loved Elgar’nan greatly. As a gift to him, the land brought forth the birds and beasts of sky and forest, and all manner of wonderful green things. And yes, Elgar’nan did love his mother’s gifts. He praised them highly and walked amongst them often.” Sarel’s hands, spread wide again to encompass all of creation, came slowly to rest upon his knees as he leaned forwards, allowing the firelight to catch at his vallaslin, making the shadows beneath his eyes dance in jagged tears. “But the sun, looking down upon the fruitful land, grew jealous. He could not abide the sight of Elgar’nan’s joy in the works of the land and, out of spite, he shone his face full upon all the creatures she had created, and burned them all to ashes. The land cracked and split from bitterness and pain, and cried salt tears for the loss of all she had wrought. The pool of those tears became the ocean, and the cracks in her body the first rivers and streams.”

I could have sworn I heard water rushing beneath the sound of his voice. The sun’s heat burned in the fire, in the light that splintered over the toes of my boots, and a soft shiver rose on the back of my neck.

“Elgar’nan was furious at what his father had done, and he vowed vengeance. He lifted himself into the sky and wrestled the sun, determined to defeat him.” Sarel’s lean hands moved in swift, sharp swoops, describing the fierceness of the battle as his voice grew hard and low. “They fought for an eternity, but eventually the sun grew weak, while Elgar’nan’s rage was unabated. His anger knew no bound nor end and, finally, Elgar’nan threw the sun down from the sky and buried him in the deepest abyss, the darkest place created by the land’s sorrow.”

The back of the storyteller’ fingers struck his other palm, then his hands drew together, locked in one still, clenched ball. The night seemed to grow darker, shadows pulling in around the fire and the still, wide-eyed faces of the Dalish.

Sarel was silent for a moment. I almost thought the story ended there, but the way his gaze roved steadily over his audience told me otherwise, beyond the fact that I knew the sun still rose. The sun had to rise in the Dalish’s stories, because the forest can’t grow without light.

“But,” Sarel said softly, that one word drifting into the fire’s smoke like a moth, and seeming to echo my very thoughts, “with the sun gone, the world was covered in shadow. All was darkness and cold, and all that was left in the sky were the reminders of Elgar’nan’s battle with his father: drops of the sun’s lifeblood, which twinkled and shimmered in the darkness.”

He sat back, letting the weight of the words wash over us. I hadn’t realised I was holding my breath. It was beautiful, in a terrible, fearsome sort of way, and I couldn’t stop myself from glancing up at the darkened sky, searching out the pinpricks of stars between the trees.

Mother had never told me stories like this. To her, the stars had all had names, or been part of tales of their own—the captured princess, the wily trickster, or the faithful lovers—and this new image was stark and unsettling… and wholly absorbing. It was something wild, primal, and above all elven. _Our_ gods. _Our_ world. _Our_ land, and our stars.

“So… that is how it was,” Sarel said contemplatively, shaking his head as he surveyed us, his manner now more that of a weary grandfather than some wild sage. He paused, fingers smoothing the knee of his breeches, and the silence pressed in, broken only by the crackle of the fire.

A small child sitting near the front, not far from where Maethor lay, looked as if she was about to burst in anticipation.

“Elgar’nan had defeated his father, the sun,” Sarel mused. He looked down at where the children sat. “All was covered in darkness. He was pleased with himself—and had not his victory been mighty?”

A ripple went through the elves; agreement, and the knowing of the story, right down, bone-deep. He nodded, apparently satisfied with the response.

“Aye. Thus, Elgar’nan sought to console his mother by replacing all that the sun had destroyed. But the earth knew that this could not be. Without the sun, nothing could grow. She whispered to Elgar’nan this truth, and pleaded with him to release his father, but Elgar’nan’s pride was great. His vengeance was terrible, and he refused.”

Sarel left another pause in the tale, allowing the fire and the silence to shape his telling. I was leaning forward, my elbows propped on my knees, almost oblivious to everything but his words. I was vaguely aware of the others—of Morrigan’s quiet disdain, Leliana’s intent and possibly at least partially professional interest, and the discomfort that seemed to emanate from Alistair—and yet I was thinking of nothing apart from how the story ended.

Hahren Sarel tilted his head to the side, letting the reflections of the flamelight skitter on his hair and ears, his vallaslin like dark fingermarks across his skin. Shadows danced in the heavy folds of his cloak and, when he spoke, it was slow and considering… as if the rest of the tale had yet to be written.

“It was at this moment,” he said, letting each word drop slowly into place, “that the Great Mother, Mythal, the Protector, came into being. She walked out of the sea of the earth’s tears and onto the land, and she placed her hand on Elgar’nan’s brow.”

He held up his right hand, the fingers lightly curved, and a shiver ran down my back.

“At her touch, he grew calm… and he knew that his anger had led him astray.” Sarel slowly lowered his hand, and another soft sigh left the gathered elves. He folded his palms together, and the fire’s light flicked shadows into the grooves of his fingers, making them a complexly entwined knot. “So humbled, Elgar’nan went to the place where the sun was buried and he spoke to his father. No one knows what was said, or what the words were that raised the sun, but Elgar’nan did agree to release him, on condition that he promised to be gentle, and to return to the earth each night. The sun, filled with remorse at what he had done, agreed.”

His hands spread wide again, free and light as birds, and my mind was full of the glorious blaze of a triumphant dawn that he conjured there, bathed in the fire’s brightness. The smell of wood sap and smoke and earth seemed to fade, and instead I breathed in crisp, clean air fragrant with dew.

“And so it was that the sun came to rise again in the sky, and shone his golden light upon the earth.” Sarel let his hands rest upon his knees, and leaned back a little, watching the sea of quiet, intent faces. “Elgar’nan and Mythal, with the help of the earth and the sun, brought back to life all the wondrous things that the sun had destroyed, and they grew and thrived. And,” he added, scooping one hand slowly through the air and curling into a soft, protective fist, “that night, when the sun had gone to sleep, Mythal gathered the glowing earth around his bed, and formed it into a sphere to be placed in the sky, a pale reflection of his true glory.”

I looked up then. I couldn’t help it; the storyteller might as well have had my head on a string.

“This we know,” Sarel said, and the words carried the tone of a prayer, “by our lore and our telling, and by the land beneath our feet, and the sun and the moon above us.”

As if by magic, the clouds that raced darkly across the sky sped on, and the sallow, pitted face of the moon peered at me from between the trees’ spiked silhouettes.

I caught my breath, but I couldn’t look away.


	9. Chapter 9

 

After Sarel's tale was done, the clan began to retire. Some of them hung back to speak with Zathrian, and he received them gracefully, though I couldn't help noticing how much like a favour it seemed. The Dalish regarded their Keeper with far more mystical awe than we'd ever treated Valendrian, and I suppose I felt slightly guilty for that.

We began to head back to our tents, aware of the need for rest before we headed out in the morning. I saw Daeon watch me go from across the fire, and noticed the tension in his body as he waited for a moment with Zathrian.

Morrigan swept off ahead of the rest of us, with a snide mumble about 'superstitious nonsense and pointless stories', while Leliana had Wynne by the elbow and was cooing about how powerful the Dalish tales were.

"…and, you know, I once knew an elven woman in Orlais who sang the most beautiful songs. She was a servant of Lady Cecilie's, but I believe her mother was Dalish. She often spoke of her heritage, but I don't think she knew many stories like _that_. I suppose she wouldn't have, would she? Anyway…."

Maethor, padding at my heel, licked his nose and yawned hugely. Sten was characteristically quiet, though I got the feeling he was thinking about Sarel's tale, too. Elements of it had reminded me of the story he'd told us in the tavern at Redcliffe, about the ashkaari and the drought-struck village.

_Nothing grew there except the bitter memory of gardens._

That was like the Dalish, I thought. For all their pride and their wildness, they were defined most of all by what they'd lost… what we'd _all_ lost. And yet, in Sten's story, the ashkaari had told the miserable villagers that, if the world changed to their disadvantage, they must change it back.

_Change yourself. You make your own world._

I wondered at the truth of that, and at the sweet pull the words held for me, and I didn't realise how furrow-faced I must have looked until Alistair drew level with me as we crossed the dark grass, clearing his throat to attract my attention.

"Hm?"

"Oh, good. You _are_ with us. I said, it was an interesting story, wasn't it?"

I glanced apologetically at him. "Ah. Yes… yes, it was…. It _was_ ," I finished lamely, lacking the words to express what I wanted.

He nodded slowly. The air was cold this far from the fire, and the trees creaked at the bounds of the camp.

"Hmm. You know, in the monastery, we were taught that the Maker created everything and placed us at the centre of it." Alistair smiled ruefully. "Can't imagine what old Brother Petripp would make of this. Doesn't bear thinking about, to be honest."

"No?" I arched a brow, and he shrugged.

"The Chantry tends to breed… set ideas. Brother Petripp was especially, um, _wary_ of outside influences."

He rubbed one palm across his knuckles as he spoke, fiddling a little with the worry token he wore. I caught sight of the echoes of a long-grown little boy in the movement, nervous of a master's cane and longing for the comfort of someone to answer his questions… to tell him that his curiosity wasn't worthless.

That was the child I imagined Alistair had been. That, and the kind of ill-behaved, attention-starved little horror some of his anecdotes described. I smiled, despite how caught I still was in the web of Sarel's stories.

"It wasn't much like what we heard in the alienage, either."

His brow crinkled. "Really? I thought you'd have had, you know… elven stories."

I shook my head emphatically. "No. Not like that. Not… well, not like that. I thought it was wonderful."

He looked at me a little askance, and I realised how breathless I must have sounded. My enthusiasm embarrassed me, and I wanted to turn my head away, but I didn't want him to think I was turning from him. Not again, no matter how hard it was to be near him, or how hard it was to see the regret in his eyes.

"Yes… you did, didn't you?" Alistair smiled sadly, and something heavy and silent settled inside my chest. He straightened his shoulders and gestured towards the tents with the kind of crispness he got when we were on the road, and he was convinced about some shortcut or other that would end up leading us through four miles of cabbage fields. "Well, I guess we should get some sleep. It all starts tomorrow, right?"

I nodded. "Mm-hm. Well… g'night."

"'Night," he echoed, a gentle cusp of sadness in his voice.

I smiled, rather uselessly, and pointed vaguely to the brook, indicating by some stupid combination of gesticulating and mumbling that I meant to wash up a bit before retiring. Alistair nodded awkwardly, and I stood there as I watched him go, trailing after the others like a despondent child.

I hated myself.

_**~o~O~o~** _

The water was cold and murky in the darkness, and my fingers trailed against something that felt like duckweed, though the camp's torches didn't really yield enough second-hand light for me to tell. Still, there was something pure about the brook's cool, dark water, and as I splashed my face I could almost pretend that the confusion and frustration was washed from my eyes like grit.

The camp was a strange place to be that night, perhaps because I felt so caught between belonging and being a stranger; so wrapped up in everything I wanted to believe in, and yet aware of the forest hanging over us. Every breath seemed to come through a shroud of leaves and damp boughs.

All the same, I took a little peace from an old, old habit. I crouched down and washed my face and hands, like I used to do before I went to bed, back when we had water enough for cleaning, and I had chores to burden myself with, instead of a Blight. It was nice to feel tidy, even if it was only for a short while.

I rose, stood in the quiet and took one last, long look around the Dalish wagons, with their folded sails and great, swelling hulls. Halla calls drifted softly on the air, and the trees creaked and groaned with the breeze high in their branches. Somewhere, an owl hooted, and a fox yelped. The great fire had been swaddled for the night; a dimmer glow than the warm little beacon we had by our tents still. I should head up there, I told myself… away, back to the boundary of the camp, to the little scrap of belonging I knew was my own. Not _elvhen_ —not even the elven girl I'd been, whose reputation Daeon had been happy to trust. Could anything be remade from something so badly broken?

I didn't really want to think about it. I didn't want to think about the memories of Denerim, and the smoky, burned houses I hadn't seen but knew must be there, hiding behind the walls.

I'd hoped to see Daeon again before we left in the morning, but that didn't look likely. I wondered if he was giving his remembrances to Taeodor tonight, or whether he'd taken Dalish religion now. What did they do for their dead? I should probably have asked, I realised, though I'd been too busy in the healer's tent being shocked at the nature of the curse to question whether they burned the bodies.

Wiping my damp hands on my breeches, I started to move back towards the edge of camp, and the line of our tents. I passed a couple of the smaller aravels, all darkened and shut up for the night, and didn't expect to see another soul.

Needless to say, I jumped like a startled rabbit at the sound of a voice emerging from the shadows.

"Ah, the ever-dutiful Warden," Zevran said, in tones laced with the sultry smokiness of complete relaxation. "I trust you have had an enjoyable evening?"

I turned to the landship in whose lee I stood, and found him on its steps, the weak light of a small lantern that burned within the wagon gilding his face. His hair and shirt both had the kind of rumpled look that spoke of hurried dressing, but his face was a picture of smug, lazy comfort.

Warmth began to rush to my cheeks as a few connections dropped into place, but I was determined not to give him the satisfaction of believing he'd embarrassed me.

"P-Perhaps not as, uh, enjoyable as yours," I said, and it would have sounded more acidly tart if I'd managed not to stumble on the words.

He just beamed, those hooded eyes glimmering like citrine in the dimness. A shape moved within the shadows at the aravel's door, and a pale hand slipped out to grasp at Zevran's shoulder, moving swiftly to the neck of his shirt. I heard a murmured protest, and looked away as he reached up to catch the questing fingers in his.

"What's this? Ah… enough, you greedy creature. _Basta_! What did I say, hmm?"

He'd evidently wasted no time with the elf who'd caught his eye earlier. The boy emerged into the candle-tinted moonlight, still trying to pull Zevran back in with him, and despite my attempts at not looking, I could hardly miss how stunning he was. His skin seemed light against Zev's, his vallaslin a poem of dark ink on a pale, unblemished page, and that thick fall of braids and embellished locks hung wildly about his shoulders.

He was lithe, feral, beautiful… and very naked.

The warmth that had flooded my cheeks crashed into a full and complex blush, and I took Andraste's name in blasphemous vain under my breath, swiftly turning away to stare at the grass.

Soft laughter and the insistent warmth of kisses hung on the air, perfumed with hints of sweat and spice that were so suggestive I tried to stop breathing in altogether.

"Shh… I must have rest, _da'assan_. Would you work me until I cannot fight, and leave me to die pathetically among the trees?"

The elf muttered a Dalish imprecation, and then something else I didn't hear. I was still staring implacably at the grass, watching the dark silver shape of a spider creeping along one small tussock, and fervently wishing I'd either not stopped in the first place, or had some way of excusing myself.

I cleared my throat, ready to mumble some tangled farewell, but I didn't get a chance.

"I really don't think—" Zevran began, but the boy wasn't listening to him.

He leaned over the aravel's rail, fixed on catching my attention in that very Dalish way: a hiss of breath, almost, pushed through his teeth. It was brisk and insolent, reminding me that I was not one of his kin, and had yet to earn their respect.

I raised my chin, already a little annoyed, even before the moonlight and the weak glow of candles picked out every bold and hard angle on the boy's face. Just looking at him made me feel inferior.

"I want to come with you," he said, his Common burred with the clipped lilt I'd heard in several of the _elvhen_. "Into the forest."

Zevran winced. "That—"

The boy turned his head suddenly, braids scattering across his bare shoulders, and fixed Zevran with a look of imploring rawness.

"You said this woman leads you. She is the Grey Warden. If I want to offer her my bow—"

Despite the awkwardness of the meeting, that caught me by surprise. I shot Zev a questioning glance, and he had the grace to look embarrassed as he raised a hand to quiet his new friend.

"Yes, but…. Ah, _brasca_. Fair enough. Warden, this is Farriel. He is apprentice to the clan's carpenter."

"Athras," Farriel supplemented, and I nodded.

"I met him."

Zevran nodded tartly. "Well, everyone knows everyone. How charming. You will show some respect to the Warden," he added, the words slipping low and seeming to strike Farriel like the slaps of a belt.

The boy's shoulders stiffened, and he faced me with something very much like defiance, though it was mitigated with a terse kind of deference in the way he inclined his head.

"I mean it," he said, with only the slight hint of a sulk as he raised his eyes to mine, the darkness making them look like huge, open pools. "I have won my _vallaslin_ , Warden. I am no child. I wish to go with you, for the honour of my clan, and the aid of my people."

I let a slow breath leak between my lips. It had been a long, strange few days, and now this beautiful young man wanted to die with us. Perhaps it was testament to how far all my long weeks on the road had driven me that, at that moment, he seemed to be an echo of Sarel's tale. I looked at him—painted in moonlight, standing there as a silvered echo to Zevran's tanned skin and golden hair—and he was the reflection of the sun, the glowing earth gathered by Mythal and placed in the sky. He was the point where glory and compassion met, and he didn't seem real at all.

I shivered, reining my thoughts in and swallowing down the stories that were still running rampant in my mind. Alistair had probably been right to look so disappointed at the eagerness with which I opened myself to Dalish whispers.

"We, uh, we leave early," I said, narrowing my eyes as I looked from Farriel to Zevran, and taking in the stiff, mask-like blankness the Antivan's face had acquired. "I'll speak with Zathrian before we go. If your Keeper wills it, and you can fight, I see no reason why not. But, for now, I think we all need rest. Zevran?"

"Warden."

I heard the coolness in his voice, no doubt signalling deep disapproval, but the boy looked proud enough to burst. Farriel inclined his head, his braids swinging forwards as he almost bowed to me.

A smile danced at the corner of his mouth as he looked to Zev, hand lighting briefly on his shoulder, and I knew it wasn't for me, or the Grey Wardens—or maybe even his clan—that he wanted to fight with us. It was foolish, and sweet, and sad, and it made my chest tighten a tiny little bit.

Zevran raised his hand, fingers lightly touching Farriel's knuckles, and then moving to the line of his jaw.

" _Sogni d'oro, caro,_ " he purred, and the look that passed between them made me blush afresh.

Farriel pressed in close, and he kissed Zev… well, in a way _I_ certainly hadn't ever kissed anybody, much less thought to be kissed. It was a fierce, hungry kind of passion, his hand rising to clasp the other elf's jaw, as if lips alone couldn't bring them close enough. His fingers moved sinuously over the tattoo that hugged Zevran's cheekbone, tracing the lines; caressing them without even having to look at their shape.

I turned away again to studiously examine the grass, and decided that the two of them couldn't have wasted a single moment since I'd left Zevran by the aravels that afternoon. Heat flamed in my cheeks and, yes, I suppose my city-bred morals were offended.

Outside the alienage, I know what people think. I knew it then, and it is not something that has changed with the years. To be seen as elven is to be fair game—to be a servant, or a whore, or a criminal, because such are our lots in life. Within the walls, plenty of people accept that for truth; sometimes not even knowing they're doing it.

When I was a child, I grew used to the taunts of those who thought my father put on airs. Yes, he was strict, and yes, our end of the district was a great deal different to the tenement buildings where dice games and girls in shem dresses spilled out into the streets… but, outside the walls, no one ever made those distinctions. They saw the mud on me, perhaps, and never thought that it washed off.

It was a wonder to me that night that, somehow, Zevran seemed more of a gutter-rat than I could ever have been.

"Mmm. You should go inside," he said as they finally parted, casting a soft smile the length of Farriel's bare body, "before you get any colder, no?"

The boy grinned. " _Mahvir_ ," he said, and the word was a whisper of promise.

He looked to me, and gave me a respectful nod as Zevran moved down the steps of the aravel, but I knew he wasn't really seeing me.

He watched until Zev joined me, and we began to cross the darkened camp, and then he finally retreated into his wagon. I didn't think Zevran had looked back even once.

I supposed it wasn't my place to pass comment, but I couldn't hold it in.

"What did you think you were doing? I— I mean," I added hurriedly, aware even before the assassin's eyebrows finished climbing skywards that I should probably rephrase that one, "was… _that_ …really a good idea?"

He smirked pityingly at me and shook his head.

"Tch… if you have to _ask_ , my dear, then you have never experienced the rewards. At least—"

"Never mind what I've experienced," I said sharply, aware of the wicked grin spreading across his face. "I meant—"

"I know what you meant, o most virtuous one."

The grin got even wider, and I was grateful for the darkness masking my blush, though I still wanted to kick him.

"He was simply curious. About my marks," Zevran added, gesturing elegantly with two fingers at his cheek. "Yes? I saw no harm in indulging that curiosity a little."

From where I was standing, it looked more like a _lot_ of indulging, but I didn't say so. Zevran smirked again, which I took to mean he thought I disapproved, and was enjoying the fun of tormenting me.

"He was a quick learner, mind you."

"I don't want to know," I said hastily. "Aren't the Dalish a bit… _proper_ about that kind of thing?"

The warm beacon of our small fire was looming closer, the little forest of tents and ropes like an oasis of familiar things; canvas, and split wooden poles, and all the gear we'd carried since Redcliffe, which seemed so very, comfortingly, different to the ornate, alien wildness of Dalish ware. The grass, damp with late evening dew, crunched softly under my boots.

Zevran shrugged. "They are rather set in their ways regarding the courtships between men and women, I suppose. Proofs of worth must be made before a couple bonds, but there the intent is the bearing of children, yes? Besides, Farriel has been alone since his mother died—not long before the werebeasts attacked, he said—and, so, really, who needs to know, hmm?"

I can't say why that surprised me. Perhaps it wasn't what he said as how he said it, so perfumed with insouciance and genuine unconcern. He walked beside me as if he was tripping on air, his gait loose and easy, his smile faint but wolfish… and yes, maybe I was a little jealous.

"So, you just…?"

I didn't know what I wanted to accuse him of. Toying with Farriel, perhaps, or some kind of moral laxness, or maybe just having so much more freedom than I'd ever dreamed of. Either way, I didn't know what to do with the frustration bubbling up between my words. I couldn't even finish a sentence.

"I mean," I tried again, "you just…. Do you even…? Do you care for him at all?"

Zev looked sharply at me then. We were nearing the stand of our tents, the others already safely ensconced in their respective bedrolls, with the exception of Morrigan, who I could see silhouetted against the fire, crouching there like some kind of sentinel outlined in flame.

I knew I'd overstepped a mark between us, but I didn't understand why his eyes suddenly seemed so cold.

"Ah," he said, his voice oddly devoid of expression, "what it is for love to be beautiful, and life simple. Such are the wonders of youth."

I frowned. I didn't like being made fun of, but Zevran didn't give me the opportunity to complain.

"Of course," he said quickly, looking away from me, across to the tree line, and whatever lurked within it, "you will not allow him to come with us tomorrow."

"No?"

"No." He glanced back at me, a slight look of worry flickering over his eyes. "He is a woodsmith, not a hunter. Farriel is quick, agile… fast to learn, yes. But he is not skilled enough to fight by my side, or yours."

I snorted, unbidden memories of our first meeting washing through my mind, and how I'd ended up sitting on the ground with a dead would-be assassin draped over me, and my boot stuck in the jaws of a claw trap.

"To be fair, I've been on something of a steep slope of learning these past few months."

Zevran smiled darkly. "Perhaps. But the things you have seen, things you have done… they have given you great strength. Even greater, I think, than the formidable qualities you already possessed. Farriel does not have this," he added, ignoring my half-ready attempt to disagree about my 'formidable' anything. "He has bravery, yes, but it is not the same. If he follows us, he will die stupidly and—though it is extremely possible that we all will, following this insane mission of yours—I would rather not be responsible for that _particular_ death."

He had his tongue firmly wedged in his cheek with that little speech, but the sarcasm overlaid an honesty I had not expected. He was watching me very carefully, his gaze knife-sharp behind the suave insolence of his expression.

"All right," I said. "I'll do my best to put him off."

"Thank you."

Zevran treated me to a shallow, simple, and yet very elegant bow that—in anyone else, at any other time—I would taken for mockery. His eyes never left my face; just two chips of amber, hard and glittering.

We said goodnight, and went to our separate tents. I nodded to Morrigan, though she barely seemed to see me. She was staring into the fire, her lips moving gently but soundlessly, as if she was counting under her breath. It gave me the shivers, though I doubted it was anything dreadful. For a start, I wasn't as suspicious of her as Alistair was and, secondly, Wynne would surely have known if she was using blood magic. I had no doubt of that, because I trusted the older mage's integrity completely… and because, even after the Circle Tower, my actual understanding of magic, and the power of maleficarum, was limited. I'd never seen true blood magic in action, subtly bending the minds of those it touched. I had no notion of how the seed of a thought could be planted, and a person's will warped until they believed they were acting of their own volition, and not that the of the creature controlling them.

At that point, I even still believed that every choice I'd made in the Dalish camp had been my own.

I ducked into my tent, half of me full up with trepidation for the morning, and the other half still lingering somewhere between Sarel's stories and the cold, muddy reality that was so damnably full of awkwardness.

I make-believed to myself that I hadn't glanced towards Alistair's tent on the way, and make-believed that I wasn't thinking of him. I didn't believe my own lies, of course. I missed him—inasmuch as I'd had him in the first place—and I was afraid that I'd pulled so far away from him in the past two days that the damage couldn't be repaired. I wasn't even sure I _wanted_ it so, much less understood why I felt lingering threads of irritation towards him. Everything just seemed so bloody complicated.

Maethor had huddled himself up in my bedroll, and obviously rooted through my pack in search of anything edible or worth chewing. There were odds and ends of such possessions as I still had scattered all around him: a tin mug, the brown dress I clung to like a relic, a few spare bandages, and an extremely grubby sock, partially chewed. I was too tired to be annoyed. He cocked an ear and whined softly, rolling over to show me the thinly furred expanse of belly, those great big paws flopping like rags from his thick, muscular legs.

"Horror," I chided, and poked the hound in the stomach. "Go on. Move over."

He gave a creaky little canine groan, deep in his chest, and wagged his stubby tail, but lolled over onto his side and allowed me to pull the blankets out from under him.

I didn't mind his warmth that night… or the smell of dog.

_**~o~O~o~** _

The morning came bright and clear, and cold as knives.

I was awake to see it; I'd slept only a little, and that the kind of thin sleep that a body takes just to keep itself going. Maethor had vacated my bedroll and, when I straightened myself up and slipped out of my tent, I found him sprawled out in front the dying fire, washing his underparts with a series of unpleasant snuffling, slurping noises.

Everything was, apart from that, very quiet. Sten was already up, busy packing his gear—the bare minimum we might need, for there wasn't likely to be room to set a proper camp in the forest, much less the opportunity. He glanced up and nodded to me, which I thought a gesture of surprising respect. If I hadn't known better, after our previous run-in with the terrors of the Brecilian Forest, I'd have thought the qunari was afraid.

The others rose in their turns. Alistair looked like he'd been awake half the night too, and Wynne was almost ashen-lipped, she looked so pale and grim.

"Where's Morrigan?" Leliana asked, as she looped the strap of a bag full of healing supplies across her body.

There were bandages and splints and all manner of things in there; goods she'd assembled with some kind of optimistic sense that, if any of us _were_ bitten, there might be use in treating it.

Nearby, a raven croaked coarsely and, in a rattle of tree branches and wings, her question seemed answered.

"Oh," Leliana mouthed, hooking her quiver over her shoulder.

As a group, we ostentatiously avoided looking to the tree line until, a moment or so later, Morrigan reappeared, still adjusting her robes.

"I saw nothing," she announced. "There are tracks all over the forest, but the beasts move as swiftly and silently as the blasted elves. They may leave traces of their presence, but they cover their tracks. All I can say is that the storyteller was not entirely wrong: the forest is like a live thing, and it protects its secrets. I could see nothing of deep wildwood. Nothing at all."

Her gaze swept across us, hard and cold, and lingered on me like she blamed me for the entire endeavour. Alistair sighed wearily.

"Great. Demon trees and camouflaged werewolves. Throw in some possessed squirrels, it'd make my day complete."

Zevran finished scuffing earth over the extinguished fire, and shouldered his pack. "I would not joke about it. They could probably give you a very nasty bite. Not as bad as a werewolf, perhaps, but you take my point."

Alistair wrinkled his nose. "You know, when you say it like that, it… well, it really doesn't help at all."

I shook my head, quietly pleased that they could at least manage a degree of banter. "All right. Let's get moving. Looks like Zathrian's waiting for us."

I nodded towards the centre of the camp, where a small crowd had already begun to gather. I noticed the keeper, standing beside his aravel, with several hunters around him… and one or two familiar faces.

It didn't take long to assemble our gear, and the goods that Master Varathorn had spared for us. Zevran was proudly sporting his half-Dalish leathers, every inch the fierce adventurer, and Sten looked like a veritable war machine, hung about with packs and supplies, and two axes strapped to his back, in case we needed to carve a path through the forest. From what I'd gathered, it was not the Dalish way to do harm to the living wood, but they seemed practical about the necessities of removing the obstacles… enough to gift us with extra blades and rope for the job, anyway. Leliana had her hair slicked back, her freshly polished leathers glimmering dully, while Morrigan slunk behind her, skin pale as snow in a shroud of feathers and rags.

She hadn't looked entirely well since Soldier's Peak, I thought, but it was easy enough to ascribe it to the task we were tackling, and the privations of the road. Besides, had _I_ fully recovered from the demons we'd faced there?

Alistair and Wynne joined us as we moved towards the keeper's aravel, and I didn't miss the mage's fleeting look of concern. I could only guess what they'd been talking about… or how much more than me they both guessed of what we'd find within the forest. Even Maethor seemed subdued as he padded at my side, his ears cocked as the crowd of elves turned to greet us.

Much of the camp was gathered to see us off. I saw Athras at the back of the group, and Lanaya at Zathrian's shoulder, looking pale and worried. Mithra and her two compatriots were among them, as was Daeon, though I didn't spot Zevran's friendly apprentice. The elves were waiting patiently for us, however. Seemingly, we were to be accorded a farewell of respect and gratitude… and I took that to mean that they didn't expect us back.

"Warden." Zathrian addressed me, inclining his head slightly, one hand wrapped around his staff and the other clasping the folds of his heavy cloak closed.

Alistair was right beside me, yet he didn't seem to bristle at being so ostentatiously ignored. He just stood there, square-shouldered and keen-eyed, watching the gathered Dalish with poorly disguised trepidation.

"Keeper," I returned, bowing shallowly.

"We thank you for your efforts." Zathrian's voice was just loud enough to carry around the centre of the camp, gifting us with his benediction. It smacked of ceremony… or perhaps eulogy. "Creators guide you on your path and, with their blessing, may you succeed where those before you fell."

A murmur went through the elves, and I tried not to look at their faces. One woman had her child with her: one of the skinny, wild little ones who'd been so interested in our arrival. He stared at us the same way he'd stared before, a look of challenge and curiosity, but no trace of fear. His mother's hand lay on his shoulder, her knuckles pale as she gripped the patterned cloth of his tunic.

I knew I ought to say something, but I wasn't sure what. I had no heroic promises of victory and—just to the right of my eye line, a squat shape against the trees—I was very aware of the healer's tent, full of the sick and dying. I took a deep breath.

"If Witherfang can be found, we'll find him. If the curse can be lifted, we will see it done."

I sounded surprisingly confident. Maybe, somewhere inside, I really believed it… and why not? We had already done remarkable things and—though I tried not to let myself dwell on the fact that, every day, the odds on victory lengthened even further—we _were_ a formidable, and exceptionally lucky, band. My silver dreams of Garahel and an elven army had grown a little tarnished in the daylight, what with the very real prospect of werebeasts and demon trees ahead of us, but I kept my head up, and I met the keeper's gaze steadily as he surveyed us.

" _Serannas_. I pray that your determination finds you favour with the gods." Zathrian leaned his staff towards the group of young men to his right, gesturing them to step forward. "You also have… volunteers."

There was an echo of disdain in the word, and I soon saw why. The little group of hunters who stood ready to join us comprised Revasir and Aegan, the two men whom we'd first encountered with Mithra, together with two red-headed elves I didn't know, and Daeon, trussed up in tooled leather and bristled with a quiver full of arrows.

"We're coming with you," he said, stepping out of the crowd and glaring at me like it wasn't an offer of help at all, but some kind of challenge.

Perhaps it was. Perhaps, I supposed, it was more than the clan could stomach to have outsiders try to mend their troubles… and more than Daeon could stand to let me take any of the credit.

I saw how brave he was being, though, and I guessed how hard he'd had to fight Zathrian for this. Had it been him who instigated it, or had the others weighed in too? I had no idea, but the atmosphere in the camp was tight as a nobleman's purse.

I swallowed thickly, casting around for something gracious to say. "Uh… well, if you're sure. Thank you."

There had probably been more rousing rallying cries in the history of those marching to war.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group moves further into the forest and, as Meri finds herself responsible for so many people, she wonders what they've left behind them.

Despite my mild concern, the Dalish hunters were a boon as the trees drew in around us and, with the camp’s relative openness falling away behind us, the ground turned thick with drifts of leaves and twigs. They moved through the dappled shafts of light like ghosts, and they seemed to disturb nothing, nor leave even footprints as they walked. 

I’d been a little unsure as to whether we should really have accepted their company, but I could hardly have declined without it seeming a slight to their skill… and it wasn’t as if we didn’t need the help. I was just surprised we hadn’t had to fight Farriel off as well. I hadn’t seen the boy anywhere in the camp. I didn’t know if Zevran had. Maybe he’d already met with him again and convinced him our task wasn’t safe. Either way, the assassin was keeping very quiet, padding soundlessly after Daeon and the others, while the bigger of the two redheaded elves—who’d introduced himself, somewhat tersely, as Rhyn, and the other as his brother Taen—took point. 

Morrigan was at the far left of the group, picking her way through the undergrowth with practiced ease, and Leliana was near enough keeping pace with the Dalish. From the back she almost looked like one of them, her leathers lending her lean frame a boyish squareness, and her height putting her just a little above the taller of the elven men. I felt short, though I knew I wasn’t  _that_ much smaller. Anyway, I had far nicer ears than her. 

To my right, Zevran prowled silently, shooting intermittent worried glances towards the trees. I supposed he had plenty to be wary of after last time he’d been in the forest, and I was just glad we were all together. Maethor seemed to agree, for the hound was practically glued to my heel, trotting along with his nose to the ground, spine stiff, ears and tail twitching at every creak of a branch or flutter of a leaf. 

Behind me, Alistair and Sten were like a small troop of infantry clanking through the forest, with Wynne bringing up the rear. It had occurred to me that we should have made more effort to be quiet but, I supposed, if we  _did_ encounter werewolves, they would probably smell us long before they saw or heard us. That thought—far from comforting as it was—lingered with me a little as we moved through the pathless undergrowth, and I realised I wasn’t the only one thinking about it. 

Leliana was humming quietly, almost under her breath. As I listened, I recognised the tune as part of one of the battle songs from  _Dane and the Werewolf_ . I glanced at her and, caught with the melody on her lips, she smiled guiltily at me. 

“Well, it is a little apt, no?”

Morrigan snorted. “I suppose you think that funny, do you? We shall see how you laugh when the beasts are ripping the flesh from your bones.”

Daeon turned and looked back at the women, his brow furrowed. As his gaze caught mine, it was like peering down a tunnel of years; I was staring right back into the alienage… and we had both changed so much. 

“Huh. Don’t remember you always finding such cheerful company, Tabris.” 

I shrugged, a little frisson of pleasure at being called that again rippling through me. It had been so long, and I almost didn’t mind the bittersweet tug of memories. 

“Well, you know how it is,” I said, squinting up at the trees in an affectation of unconcern. “All those long nights around the campfire. You’ve got to talk about _something_ , right? Even if it is severed limbs.”

Here, the canopy was thick, the eyeless guards of trunks and interlocked boughs comprised of dark branches almost entirely bared for the winter, and heavy, ferny arms of pine and fir, sharp with narrow green needles and ever-damp with mist or dew. The weak, chequered sunlight that filtered down between them caught on the odds shapes the trees made against each other. They seemed both clothed and unclothed; almost like corpses, with some torn open, right down to the bones. 

Daeon swore under his breath. “That’s horrible! Huh… you know, time was, you were just another girl to me. I never knew there was so much bloodlust under the surface.”

I snorted bitterly and Revasir, the dark-haired hunter who’d tried to be friendly before, turned to look back at me. 

“Fierce,” he said, in that clipped accent of his, and he tapped a hand against his ornately tooled breastplate as he gave me a yellow-toothed smile. “Good way to be. Like the bear: she knows when to rise up, fight back… but not always shouting.”

That seemed to amuse Daeon, for he laughed and nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah. Quiet until the guts come out. Like what you did to that shem lord, right?”

Their mirth tasted bitter to me. I grimaced and looked away, not keen to dwell any more on Vaughan Kendalls. The Dalish may have liked the story—and they certainly grinned about it then, with more smiles and nods passing between the hunters, along with a few choice Elvish words—but I wished I’d never told it. 

“So, um, did… did you two know each other well?” Alistair asked suddenly, picking up his pace from the back of the group. 

The question made an awkward kind of silence pool over the top of the endless, boot-trudging footsteps and the crunch of leaves and mud, and Daeon glanced over his shoulder with a look of mild suspicion. 

“In the alienage, I mean,” Alistair continued, the note of determined brightness in his voice suggesting he wasn’t going to shut up until he got an answer. “I know you said your brother was—” 

“Not really,” Daeon said shortly, with another glance back at me, and a brief, half-heartedly apologetic smile. “You were just _there_ , weren’t you? Never thought about it much. Anyway, we lived at the other end of the ward. I think Father thought about matching you to Taeodor once, but nothing ever came of it.”

“Did he?” I blinked, caught between genuine surprise and embarrassed discomfort, both at the new information and the way Daeon had so effortlessly excluded Alistair. “I, uh… I didn’t know that.”

It was just starting to rain lightly, though little of it drifted down through the trees. Daeon shrugged as he turned to face ahead once more. I watched the back of his leathers move, his dark cropped hair already misted with a scattering of raindrops, and wondered whether he was smiling mischievously. 

“Well, it was just after your mother died, as I recall,” he said, raising his voice a little over the damp trudge of non-Dalish feet. “You were pretty young, and I don’t think your father liked the idea much. Guess he was holding out for a better offer.”

“Nothing wrong with Taeodor,” I said, wondering why Father had never mentioned the idea to me. He’d been a nice enough boy, and Soris’ friend to boot… and maybe there had even been a time when I thought him a little handsome. 

“Oh, well! I’m glad you approve, Your Highness,” Daeon teased snidely, raising one hand to me over his shoulder in a mocking flourish of a salute. 

I wrinkled my nose. “That’s not what I meant. I meant—”

“Whatever.” He shook his head, and peered back at me again, his small, dark eyes narrowed to slits. “I don’t know. Your father always had some strange ideas. Never knew how much coin he dropped to get you fixed up with that fancy looker from Highever, anyway.” A rather unkind smirk curved his lips, the hint of teeth bared behind them. “I wish I _had_ seen him. Was he as flashy as they said? Nice pair you’d have made, I bet!”

And there it was again; the boy I remembered, and the taunts that had always stung, even after I grew used to hearing them. 

I said nothing. The past was another country, and the possibilities that had been stolen from us were no more than whispers on the wind. For all I knew, Nelaros and I might indeed have been a terrible match. He might very well have thought me downright ugly, or at least too plain to bear, and swanned off into the arms of another woman even before our honey-month was over. Plenty of marriages ended up that way although—as long as the husband still put food on his family’s table—a lot of women were quite happy to be freed from the trials of conjugal responsibility. 

I doubted I’d have minded much. After all, I’d never really expected that kind of affection to play a big role in my life… and I stared fixedly at the ground then, afraid of the way my pulse quickened, and the way my mind prodded me towards uncomfortable assessment of the atmosphere thickening around me. 

I didn’t mean to snatch a sideways glance at Alistair, or to find him peering at me, with his mouth glumly pursed and his brows drawn low. He looked like he might be about to say something, and I turned my gaze away hurriedly, suddenly finding something terribly interesting in the drifts of rotting leaves my boots scuffed up with every step. 

We hadn’t gone that much farther when Rhyn stopped us, holding out one hand at hip-height in a brisk, silent gesture. 

Something rustled in the trees. Maethor growled, deep in his chest, and I reached for my dagger. It surely couldn’t be werewolves already… we were barely a half hour away from the camp. 

Rhyn, poised and ready, drew his blade—a thick, curved thing, like a ridged claw; the type of weapon I’d heard the Dalish call  _Dar’Misaan_ —his mass of matted and braided red locks spilling down the centre of his back like a mane. He wore a round shield on his left arm, which I guessed was of ironbark, after hearing Master Varathorn describe the wood. It had a bluish hue to it, beneath the painted design that so closely matched the vallaslin on Rhyn’s pale skin: delicate, flowing lines, yet spiked with hard angles and sharp tendrils. The shapes made me think of some ancient creature, lying folded in wait. 

Taen and Aegan tensed as the brush cracked, and I think we all drew a collective breath, ready to be set upon by monsters… until Farriel detached himself from the shadows, slipping delicately between the gnarled trunks of two bare trees. 

Rhyn swore under his breath and scowled viciously at the boy, while the other hunters seemed to look amongst themselves for reassurance, all caught between confusion and annoyance. Daeon seemed the most perplexed, like he didn’t understand why Rhyn should be so angry. I knew without turning to look at my companions that only one of them would recognise the boy, but I didn’t spare Zevran a glance. 

Farriel looked different with his hair bound up and extra hide pads strapped to his arms and shins, added protection to the crafter’s leathers he usually wore. A small pack was slung over his back, and a series of sheathed blades hung at his belt. He stared defiantly at the other Dalish before his gaze flashed to Zev, then moved to me. He inclined his head very slightly, into what I supposed was the nearest he ever came to a gesture of respect. 

“Warden.”

I could feel the elves glaring at me, like this was all my fault… and it probably was, wasn’t it? I should have told him no; I should have said we didn’t want him. I certainly shouldn’t have given the boy any hint of hope—and yet it was Zevran I felt angry with, even as I gritted my teeth and nodded at Farriel. 

“I didn’t expect you to follow us.” 

Behind me, Morrigan snorted. “A hanger-on, is it? Hmph. Well, the more the merrier when the werebeasts attack.”

Farriel’s dark eyes flitted over the group, but he said nothing, his expression a taut mask as he tried to gauge his welcome. 

“He is no hunter,” Rhyn said, directing his irritation at me as he pointed accusingly at Farriel. “He does not belong with us. The hunt for Witherfang is no nursing place for children.”

“I may be no hunter,” Farriel retorted, “but nor am I ‘child’.”

“Your vallaslin is still wet! Go home, craftsman.”

I winced as the boy spat back some Elvish insult it was probably a blessing I didn’t understand. Arguing about his presence was hardly going to help us—not to mention the time we’d waste doing it. The sunlight that passed through the trees was turning from weak strips to wide bands of gold; if this carried on, it would be past noon before made it any further into the forest.

Zevran had moved silently to my shoulder, and I shot him an accusatory look. He shrugged minutely, those golden brows arched in an affectation of innocence. 

“Come, lethallin,” Revasir wheedled. “Go back, yes? While you can.”

“No.” Farriel crossed his arms and scowled. “I pledged my blade to the Warden,” he added, nodding at me like I was the subject of a merchant’s barter. “She said I could come.”

Naturally, they all turned and looked at me. My heart sank. 

“Now, wait a minute. I didn’t— I _said_ I would speak with Zathrian,” I protested, aware that this was one argument I was not likely to win, even as I looked back at my companions, eager for them to believe I’d had no part in the boy’s plan… although I couldn’t have said why that seemed so important. “I said, if he—”

“What does it matter?” Morrigan cut across me, evidently losing patience with the unfolding drama. “He’s here now. Let him come, if he so wishes. He will die, or not die, and on his head be it.” 

Daeon frowned at her. Of all the elves, he seemed to be the most uncomfortable around her. I’d noticed that in the distance he placed between himself and the witch, and I’d wondered whether it was because Morrigan’s Wilder magic was that little bit closer to the kind of mysticism the Dalish were steeped in; they didn’t find her as strange as we did. Had I had the time to think about it then, I might have asked myself what that should mean for me, and all my eagerness to do Zathrian’s will. 

Farriel just looked coolly at us, and shrugged. “If I had asked the keeper, he would have said no.”

“Fool!” Rhyn snapped. “Why should you wish to get yourself killed? There is no honour in this.”

“And who says I shall die? I can fight. Better than the flat-ear,” Farriel added, sparing a sneer for Daeon. “He is no truer hunter than I.”

That was almost enough to bring us to a fistfight. 

“Take that back!” Daeon demanded, all but lunging towards him. “All right, so I’m city-born, but I’ve _earned_ what I have here. I made my kill on the first time out!”

Farriel scoffed. “One mangy wolf. One wolf, seth’lin… and no vallaslin.”

The words flew between them like sharp, dark things in the brush, and their voices seemed loud against the trees. Something rattled high in the branches—a crow, maybe, though I hadn’t heard any birds for a while. There didn’t seem to be many of them in the deeper parts of the forest; either they were afraid to venture in, or perhaps they were just more sensible than we were.

I didn’t know what ‘seth’lin’ meant, but Daeon evidently did and—from his wide-eyed, angry glare—it wasn’t anything pleasant. 

“It was my pelt!” he all but shouted, colour splashing onto his bare, uninked cheeks. “My kill! By your own clan law, I am more a hunter than you, apprentice!”

“ _Hamin_!” Rhyn’s eyes narrowed as he looked between the two of them. “You know what Zathrian ruled. Daeon was to be given the chance to prove himself. His vallaslin will follow when he is ready. That was the Keeper’s word… and these are uncommon times.”

Farriel scoffed quietly. “Yet you won’t welcome me.  _Ma emma harel_ ,  _lethallin_ . I have more iron in me than the flat-ear can hope for.”

I was finding him far less amenable than I had during our brief meeting the night before but, as I glanced at Zevran, I saw no hint that the assassin intended to take his pet in hand. That annoyed me, I suppose—or perhaps it was Farriel’s attitude to Daeon. Perhaps it was the awkwardness of being surrounded so closely by the hunters, and knowing that the grains of respect I’d gleaned from my own companions counted for nothing among them. 

Whatever my idle fancies about winning the respect of the Dalish, it felt excruciatingly clear in that moment that we were two parties travelling together, not one united force. It was probably that which made me step forwards, trying to command the attention of the men in my second-hand, patched-up Dalish jack. 

“Enough. We don’t have the time to stand around arguing. I don’t care much for being lied to—” I looked pointedly at Farriel, whose insouciantly insolent expression was, as my father would have said, inviting a slap. “—but I believe Rhyn is right. These are uncommon times… and I won’t turn away help.”

I probably shouldn’t have said it. I’d all but promised Zevran I’d put the boy’s offer aside, and I was sure I could feel his gaze burning into the back of my neck, disapproval and annoyance radiating off him like a heat haze. 

Still, would he have been safer if I’d told Farriel to head back to the camp? It seemed he’d been following us since we left—and the hunters hadn’t noticed his presence, or at least hadn’t admitted to it. That made me wonder if the boy wasn’t a better blade than they thought… or whether they’d simply pretended he wasn’t there. Maker, for all I knew, Zevran had known he was following us too, and never said a word, which I didn’t find the least bit comforting. 

I felt more like an outsider than ever, and I disliked that sensation. Yet, even as the gazes of the Dalish and my companions alike turned to me—in varying shades of disbelief, irritation, and uncertainty—I found I didn’t care whether they approved or not. I didn’t care whether I was satisfying the honour and traditions of the wild elves, or living up to the Warden that Zevran might or might not have believed me to be. 

All I wanted was to end this fragmentation, and to press on into the forest… no matter what came of it. 

The light rain that had been filtering down through the canopy—little more than a fine mist—seemed to seep into everything, like a soft gauze that covered the world. 

Taen looked anxiously at Rhyn. Physically, the brothers were very much alike, though I thought Rhyn was probably the elder by a couple of years; he certainly seemed bigger, stronger, and bossier. Then there was that look of slightly worried uncertainty shading Taen’s face, in amongst the discomfort and annoyance. I saw the same blend of worry and damped-down anger in Aegan, like they thought I was an upstart. I knew it couldn’t be because of my sex; Aegan and Revasir had been happy enough to obey Mithra. No, it wasn’t my gender… it was my kind. They thought me not just an upstart, but a flat-ear upstart, I decided. A  _seth-lin_ , maybe, whatever that was. 

Revasir and Daeon were looking at me too, though I saw more subdued reservation than outright rebellion in their faces. Past this unquiet knot of elves stood Sten, silent and—to most observers—impassive, though I had begun to learn the slight tensions of his hard-hewn face, and the subtle shifts in his posture that spoke of impatience and irritation. 

I realised something then, as the rain began to tap harder at the interlaced branches above us, thin droplets flinging down to the musty, fragrant earth like escapees from a great pressing throng. We stood in a quiet, closed-in place, with just the trees and the brush clasping tight around us, and it was like a tomb. This silent space held us and our words still… and no matter how close it drew us, like superstitious farmers afraid of the shadows behind their barns, it still left us islanded, and apart. 

And, if I didn’t do something, I would lose hold of my companions, and my tenuously won Dalish allies alike. 

Leliana cleared her throat, probably about to slide in with some soothing comment or supportive gesture, and it was all I could do not to glare irritably at her. Standing there, a flame-haired sylph in well-oiled leather, she made me doubt myself—doubt even my own elvenness—and I was sick of feeling like a clumsy fool. 

“We go on,” I said shortly. “This is still the path the other hunters trod, isn’t it? We head where they did: into the forest. Anyone who wants to turn back is welcome to; but I mean to find Witherfang, and I’ll take an offer from anyone who’s with me. Clear? I won’t have it said the Grey Wardens back out on a promise.”

A series of uncertain looks passed between the motley assemblage. I didn’t dare meet Alistair’s eye; if either of us should have been making proclamations of the Wardens’ credo, it was him, not me… though I didn’t imagine for a moment that he’d argue. Perhaps part of me wished he would. 

Farriel smiled smugly at the other Dalish, then turned an altogether warmer look on Zevran, which I thought probably served the assassin right. Wynne pursed her lips, and I assumed she thought I should have sent the boy back to the camp… but then she hadn’t looked comfortable from the first minute we’d first set foot among the Dalish, and I couldn’t work out why. Maybe it was their magic that worried her, or their wildness. Maybe she wasn’t so far cultivated above the prejudices of the Circle and the templars as she liked to think. 

Sten grunted. “We should move on.  _If_ you are ready?”

The elves exchanged a series of testy looks that seemed to carry a myriad of hidden mutterings in them. Only one or two were directed at me. I wasn’t sure if they were waiting for Rhynn to step forwards and lead us on, so I threw myself into the breach and strode ahead, cracking twigs and scuffing leaves beneath my mud-choked boots. 

The atmosphere was thick as pitch for a while, but at least nobody argued. 

_**~o~O~o~** _

If the truth be told, I expected to encounter much more than we did as we moved deeper into the forest. But, with the Dalish hunters guiding us, we saw no possessed trees, no terrible beasts, and very little sign that anything was amiss. 

It seemed as if we’d been travelling for hours, and perhaps we had; I struggled to keep track of time properly when there was a dark canopy of boughs and branches between me and the sun… or the grey wisps of cloud covering it, anyway. The light rain that had begun earlier now dripped from the narrow green needles of stately pines, filling the air with a dank kind of thickness. 

Rhyn stopped a couple of times, pointing out scratches on bark, or scuff marks in the leaf litter that didn’t look like anything to me, but apparently told him that we were still following the route the other hunters had taken. 

“Maybe they killed more of the beasts than Zathrian thought,” Farriel suggested, because apparently he didn’t even have the grace to keep his mouth shut once he’d been allowed to come along. 

Rhyn glared at him. “ _Maybe_ the beasts are waiting.”

Their mutual antipathy had been casting something of a pall over the group, and it wasn’t surprising that Alistair was the first to crack. He sighed loudly from the back of the party. 

“Yes, well, you never know… maybe the werewolves are just really, really full up. You know what it’s like after a big meal.”

I shot him a disapproving glare. True though it might well be, the Dalish had lost too many people too recently, and the remark was in poor taste. Aegan and Taen both looked shocked, while Rhyn stared daggers at him, further demarcating the boundaries in our mismatched group. Daeon merely curled his lip bitterly, sneering at the ground ahead as we hiked on through the brush. 

We passed through what felt like miles of overgrown, knotted forest, and the most exciting thing we saw was a squirrel. Aegan drew an arrow, ready to shoot it—and it was a beautiful, fluid movement, a real wonder to behold—but Maethor had already barked and lunged up at the tree the thing was skittering along, so the elf let his bow drop with a frown and a muttered curse. 

The rain didn’t let up. Not once. It was a veiled curtain, a thin and gauzy mist that got into everything, clinging just as wetly to skin and armour as to the trees themselves. The ground grew soggy underfoot, and the soft whisper of raindrops on leaves and pine needles seemed like the breathing of the forest itself. 

I’d just started thinking about the fact my belly was feeling rather empty when Aegan dropped to a crouch near one of the trees and began to inspect the ground. He held up a hand and gestured and, for a moment, I tensed—along with several of the others—my fingers curling on the hilt of my sword as I scanned the dense stands of trees for potential threats. 

Leliana moved over to where the hunter knelt and crouched beside him, touching the ridged and muddy leaf litter with careful fingers, then glancing up at the heavy trunks of the trees. 

Whatever they saw written into the place in which we stood, it was a language I couldn’t read. I frowned, unsettled and nervous of what they might be seeing. 

“There was a struggle here,” Leliana confirmed, pointing behind me to yet another group of large, gnarled trees, their leaves shed but for a few blackened, wet rags of foliage, and their bark warped into strange patterns with age. Damp lichen scored the trunks, and a few of the smaller branches had been broken. “You see? Many, many more tracks, and many arrows were loosed here.”

Wynne frowned, her lips drawn into a thin line. She’d looked uncomfortable to begin with, but now she huddled beneath her cloak, rubbing her thin hands together as she surveyed the trees. 

“I wonder if we shall find who fired them,” she said quietly, her face lined with something that looked altogether darker than mere anxiety. 

I wanted to ask what she felt, or perhaps suspected, but the Dalish had formed a tight knot, Rhyn and Aegan whispering earnestly in their fragmented Elvish, which always seemed so much more indecipherable to me because of the few words I  _could_ understand. 

The rain pattered down around us, and something scurried in the bushes, but Maethor didn’t even seem to have the heart to go after it. As I glanced down, looking at the wetness on the leaf litter—wondering how much of it might have been elven blood, had we been here but a day or so earlier—a large, fat, black-bodies beetle scuttled across the toe of my boot. I caught my breath and shook it away hurriedly, determined to tell the hunters we were moving on again. After all, if this  _was_ where their last advance party had met an end, we needed to press on and make as much haste as we could. 

It was then that the Dalish broke their small conference, and Rhyn moved over to the thickest of the tree trunks. He took a knife from his belt, cut a small shape into the bark, and spat across the place he’d cut, then pressed his hand to it, like he was saying a prayer. I was familiar enough with superstitions, but then he began to… well, sing, almost. It was a low chant, melodic and gentle, and I was surprised that so beautiful a sound could come from someone as hard-edged as him. 

I couldn’t understand the words, but I took it as a lament for the dead. The other hunters stood quiet and sombre, while Farriel—looking pale and frightened, in stark contrast to his earlier bombast—inched closer to Zevran. 

We all stood in silence while whatever ritual Rhyn was performing finished, and when he was done we pressed on again… not without a certain degree of awkwardness. There is often something uncomfortable about watching the private moments of faith that belong to another; like the unwanted glimpse of their nakedness. Not to mention, the goosebumps that had risen on my flesh wouldn’t go down. The rain kept on, and it felt like I was being swaddled in layers of something unreal and choking. 

Later—when I had the chance to learn at leisure about the ways of the People—I would discover that Rhyn’s prayer was not a lament, so much as a supplication. The Dalish believed that, in the old times, before elves lost their immortality to the quickening that humans brought, our ageless sleep was guided by two brothers, Falon’Din and Dirthamen. In death, Falon’Din, or  _Lethanavir_ , as they also called him, the ‘friend to the dead’, was called upon to guide their path and calm their souls, and it was this that Rhyn asked for his lost brethren… a path home, to a safe and peaceful rest. 

I am glad I didn’t know it then. I would rather have had the uneasiness of strange mysticism than the sharpness of a familiar sorrow. 

We moved on, and the ground grew rougher underfoot. The forest seemed to sprout hills and gullies that lay masked by the drifts of leaves and the monolithic corpses of fallen trees, and the pathless woodland ahead must have had at least a dozen twists and turns. I was almost certain that I could hear running water somewhere, but it was hard to tell beneath the rain. 

The mood was morose; more so, since we’d found the site of that skirmish and—given the change in terrain—the fact that it now looked worryingly like an ambush. Zathrian’s assertion that the werebeasts were mindless seemed… naïve, I suppose. I was puzzling over it as we walked, half-inclined to call a halt. Of course, that wouldn’t have helped. Stopping would only have made us a target for the creatures that were undoubtedly out there, watching us. I couldn’t stop looking for faces in the trees. 

We were coming to the rise of another ridge when Maethor—who had been padding along in silence, barely even dignifying the ground with more than the occasional sniff—lifted his head and, ears pricked, suddenly bounded off between the trees. I called out in surprise as his brindled body slipped through the black trunks vanishing from my sight. 

“Probably a rabbit,” Daeon said. 

The hound loosed a bark that echoed through the trees, and I shook my head.

“No,” I said, as I started to follow the sound. “He never just runs off like that. He’s found something, I’ll bet.”

As I began to push through the heavy, rough branches that grabbed and tugged at my cloak, I heard Alistair’s grim speculation: 

“Maybe, but is it something the rest of us want to see? If he’s rolling in another dead fox, you’re on your own, y’know!”

In my hound’s defence, he  _had_ only done that once. However, as I scrambled down the surprisingly steep bank that shelved away from the trees, my boots skidding on the muddy leaf litter, I saw Maethor. He was a good thirty feet down the ridge, near to what looked like a narrow creek, so we must have been getting closer to the water I’d thought I’d heard. Everything was mud-sodden and wet, and the lichen-splashed trees offered only treacherous barbs and hard obstacles… and yet the mabari had managed to find something, bundled up near the gnarled roots of an old oak. 

At first I thought it was a corpse, which struck me as reasonable, and perhaps even a relief. We’d seen no bodies at the site of the attack, and I’m sure we were all thinking the same thing, even if no one voiced it aloud. After all, if the werewolves had left no corpses, we could only assume the hunters had all either turned, or been taken. Neither prospect was pleasant. The healers’ tent at the camp had been bad enough, but I was also battling to keep memories of Ostagar from my mind, and the soldiers’ gossip of darkspawn that dragged their prisoners underground to be eaten alive. 

“There’s someone down here!” I called, scudding the last few feet on my backside and scrambling to get up again. 

The body was wrapped in the same kind of cloak that Rhyn and the other hunters wore, though it was heavily muddied and bloodstained. I didn’t really want to try and roll the corpse over, afraid of the mess I’d see, but Maethor kept nosing at it. He looked up at me, his wrinkled snout huffing inquisitively, and whined. 

I reached out and gripped the cold, sodden bundle, brushing away some of the slimy fallen leaves, and rolled it over. I hardly expected to see a face, but there was one, behind the mud and the blood. The elf had skin so pale as to be nearly translucent, criss-crossed with livid, rust-coloured vallaslin, and his hair was pale brown. His eyes were closed and his mouth hung open slackly. He felt cold to the touch and yet, as I moved him, the impossible seemed to happen. 

A few of the others were making their way down the bank behind me—I could hear footsteps, voices, and the crashing of bodies through the undergrowth—but I distinctly heard the soft, empty breath that scraped from the Dalish hunter’s body. 

He was alive. Barely, but  _alive_ . 

_**~o~O~o~** _

That moment changed our plans completely. I called to the others, yelled desperately for Wynne, and whatever healing tools or poultices Morrigan had brought with her. As Alistair, Sten, and the hunters got to my side, we started to lift the elf out of the muddy detritus of the forest floor. He was badly wounded; great swathes of bloody flesh marked his arms, with some terrifying tears and ruptures to his armour. 

We pitched a hasty camp between the small creek—really little more than a brackish, muddy cut through this part of the forest, rife with strange-looking algae and some fearsome insect life—and the far side of the gully, and set to seeing what could be done for the wounded man. 

On Wynne’s instructions, I helped Leliana strip off his ravaged clothes, exposing the extent of his injuries. He had to have been out there for days. The edges of his wounds were already black-lipped, and gave off a smell like bitter almond paste, the dark red flesh pocked with pus and clotted blood. He didn’t even wake when we washed him down with the evil-smelling concoction Morrigan drew from her scrip, or when Wynne began to prepare for the healing. 

Rhyn prowled restlessly behind us as she started to summon her powers, her hands pulsing with great spheres of blinding white light. He knew the hunter—his name was Deygan, apparently—and, however little he trusted a human mage, he knew better than to refuse the kind of help that could save a life. The other Dalish stood a little further back, though whether it was from fear or Wynne, or Deygan’s wounds, I wasn’t sure. I did know that I’d never seen Wynne’s power surge so magnificently. Even when she’d knitted my burst ribs back together in the Circle Tower—and I had no great wish to recall either that particular agony, or passing out not long after—I hadn’t known it to be like this. 

Her whole body seemed to glow, wrapped in a silvery sheen as she poured her magic, or her energy, or whatever it was she did, into Deygan’s prone body. I suppose I expected to see colour flush into his cheeks, or for him to suddenly sit up or something… but nothing really happened. After several minutes of working in burst after burst of energy, Wynne lifted her hands from him. She was deathly pale, shaking a little, and I thought the look of such terrible sadness on her face was because it hadn’t worked, but then the elf gave another slow, weak breath, and his chest began to move more regularly. 

Wynne looked fit to collapse as Alistair led her away to rest, leaving Leliana and I to dress the hunter’s wounds, while the others dragged together a fire. There was no question of moving on just then, werewolves or no. We would have to make camp where we were, and hope the position we’d chosen was defensible enough when nightfall came… if the werebeasts left us alone until the dusk. 

It was as I wrapped bandages around the deep lacerations on Deygan’s left forearm, the gauze wet and sticky with an ointment Morrigan had provided—something that smelled quite similar to the stuff she’d given me for my bloody, red-raw feet, when we’d first started out on the road—that he first seemed to stir. 

His eyelids flickered, though his eyes stayed closed, and his pale lips twitched. 

“He’s trying to wake up,” Leliana observed, putting her hand to his brow. “Poor thing. We should finish dressing these quickly.”

Sten stood close by, watching the unconscious elf with apparent dispassion, as Rhyn continued to prowl behind him. 

“Hmm.” The qunari grunted. “You should be prepared. We do not know _what_ will wake.”

“He has not turned,” Rhyn snapped, glaring at Sten as if the size difference between them didn’t matter in the slightest. “You cannot even know he was bitten, fool!”

Dalish bravery knew no height or breadth, I thought, as I tucked the ends of the bandage neatly into the knot I’d made. 

“Not turned on the outside,” Sten observed. “Yet.”

Unpalatable though it was, he made a good point. I wasn’t about to stir the argument further by saying so, however, so I reached for a different subject. 

“He’ll have to be taken back to the camp,” I said. “As soon as Wynne says he can be moved… as soon as possible, really.”

Rhyn wrinkled his nose, though his gaze was fixed on Deygan. “We cannot just turn back.”

I felt the indecision in his voice, and I sympathised. It was tempting to reach for this reason with both hands, to all turn tail and return to Zathrian, with Deygan borne among us and a hundred questions on our lips. And yet, there were all those Dalish already lying wounded. Delay would cost everyone dearly and—if Zathrian had been less than truthful before, would he really be honest now? I glanced at Deygan’s pale form, hoping he might come back to himself enough to tell us something. 

His lips moved then, but all that came out was a rough breath and something that sounded like a word but might not have been. 

“Aereyna,” Rhyn said flatly. 

I frowned. “What does that mean?”

He gave me a tired, sullen, ugly look. “It is the name of his bride.”

And, with that, the hunter turned and stalked away from me. Overhead, the slips of sky that peered through the trees seemed to be darkening. It was difficult to tell whether that just meant more rain, or the first encroachments of the evening. 

_**~o~O~o~** _

Deygan did not wake as quickly as I’d hoped, bearing easy answers and good excuses. Wynne said moving him was out of the question until at least the morning, so we dragged him closer to the fire, kept him warm, and kept watch while she poured more magic into him. She did it time and again, visibly weakening herself, and I began to wonder why she was so aggressive in the act. It was as if she was fighting him, almost daring him not to die. 

For the rest of us, it was a difficult wait. We gathered around the fire in shifts, two people always keeping watch over the ridge, and our collective breath catching every time a twig broke or a bird landed on a branch. Morrigan absented herself briefly, returning a short time later with that ruffled look that suggested she’d been in another form, and declared that there was no sign of other survivors or, more importantly, werebeasts, anywhere nearby. Alistair—who’d barely left Wynne’s side, and seemed to be glued to her like a nursemaid—snidely commented that the witch hadn’t noticed Deygan, either,  _or_ found a path to Witherfang’s lair. He suggested that her skills at airborne observation left something to be desired (I paraphrase; the words ‘blind as a bat’ may have been bandied around), and she took predictable offence, threatening as she so often did to turn him into something unsavoury. 

I had, by that point, long suspected that the pair of them found comfort in the rhythms of tormenting each other, so I didn’t intervene… although I would have appreciated a little comfort of my own. It was beginning to grow dark, the afternoon thinning away into an early evening, and I was cold, damp, tired, and afraid. 

Daeon and Aegan were taking watch. Taen sat with Leliana by Deygan’s side, frowning pensively at every uneven breath he took, while Wynne rested and Alistair and Morrigan continued to swipe at each other. Sten and Rhyn had hunkered down on the other side of the fire, and the qunari seemed to be showing the elf a tattered book, which struck me as odd. I hadn’t known Sten carried reading matter with him, much less that the two of them should find something in common to discuss. Weary as I was, I decided it wasn’t my business… and neither was whatever Zevran and Farriel were up to. They had secreted themselves a little way off, just out of the fire’s reach, and yet not so far as to be lost among the trees. I caught the white flash of Zevran’s smile as the boy’s arms wound themselves around his neck, and decided not to look any closer. 

Maethor had the right idea, I decided. He was, as was his custom, sprawled out in front of the fire, with his belly towards the flames. I hunkered down beside him, wondering half-heartedly whether we’d be able to stretch the rations we’d brought far enough, and just how we  _were_ going to get Deygan back to the Dalish camp… if he survived the night. 

“You are tired,” a voice announced, in familiarly clipped tones. 

I glanced up as Revasir sat down beside me; a respectful distance away, but still close enough to offer me what looked like a handful of twigs. 

“Here. Eat. Dried deer meat,” he explained, thrusting the strips of leathery looking matter at me again. “S’good.”

“Um… thank you.” I took one politely, and tried to surreptitiously sniff it. 

I didn’t want to offend him, but the stuff made the dried meat we carried in our supplies look positively succulent. He was still smiling cheerfully at me, though, so I had to lift it to my mouth and try to take a bite… and it was at that point I realised how badly I wished I had good teeth. 

It was salty as cheap dried fish and tougher than month-old boiled mutton, and it felt like chewing petrified wood. The place where my tooth had been knocked out back at Redcliffe had healed over well, though I still winced at the feel of the deer jerky getting stuck painfully in the socket, biting into my sore gums. Revasir didn’t seem to notice. 

“You save someone again,” he observed genially. “Like in your story.”

I blinked, confused and a little unsettled. Firstly, Deygan was hardly saved. Not yet, and possibly not ever. Secondly, it was Maethor who’d found him, not me. Thirdly—

“Story?” I echoed, even as I realised, with some degree of despondency, what he meant. 

Revasir nodded enthusiastically. “Yes! What you did to the shemlen lord, because he touched your clansmate.” 

“Oh.” I winced, mostly at his words, but also at the leathery deer meat, which was proving extremely difficult to swallow. “That. Yes…. My cousin.” 

He nodded again, apparently satisfied. “If you earned vallaslin,” he said, looking at me thoughtfully through half-lidded eyes, “you would put your pledge to Mythal, I think.”

I shook my head tentatively, confused but not really wanting to say out loud that I didn’t understand. Revasir smiled and raised a hand, gesturing to his tattoos. 

“Vallaslin comes when you leave childhood behind. There are many rituals, but you dedicate yourself to the patron you choose, and the marks are part of it.”

I hadn’t known that. I’d seen similarities between the designs and the motifs that marked many of the Dalish landships, but I hadn’t understood it. 

“They, what, they represent different gods?” I asked, though it seemed an inadequate explanation. 

“Yes.” He seemed to approve of my interest. “Mine are for Ghilan’nain, the Mother of the Halla. She is my patron; my guide.” 

“Gillana…?” I faltered, hopeless as ever at wrapping my tongue around the Elvish words. I’d started to wonder if my ancestors had been elven at all. 

“Ghilan’nain,” Revasir repeated patiently. “She was a mortal woman once, beloved of Andruil, the goddess of the hunt. But she became one of the Creators, and she is our guide. She leads us, as the halla pull our aravels.” 

He smiled thinly as he sat back a little, tearing off another strip of the deer jerky with his sharp, yellow teeth, and chewing it noisily. At my feet, Maethor stirred fitfully, probably half-heartedly contemplating the possibility of begging for scraps. 

“Before I had my vallaslin, everyone thought I would choose the mark of Andruil… and she is dear to me, but more so Ghilan’nain. The guide in the dark place, moves through the forest and into the light.” 

Revasir touched the lines on his face delicately, tracing the pattern he clearly knew perfectly, though the ink had obviously been there for years, and I hadn’t seen a single looking glass in the Dalish camp. 

“You see? Here… the hawk, the arrows… the paths of the trees. Every symbol tells a story.”

I squinted at his face, the ink’s heaviness softened by the dusk and the firelight. It would be growing dark before long, and I couldn’t relish the prospect of the night to come. All the same, I was intrigued, even if I couldn’t see the meanings in the vallaslin that he described. I thought of the stories Mother used to tell me about the stars—how each one was a captive princess, or a great hero, or this and that star were tragic lovers, pinned in the heavens for eternity—and I never had seen the shapes in those properly, either. 

Of course, that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Just because I didn’t have a poet’s way of looking didn’t make me blind to the magic that  _did_ exist in my world. 

“What’s in the symbol of Mythal, then?” I asked, not really understanding why that made Revasir smile so widely. “I know she was in the story of El… Elgannan and the sun, the one Hahren Sarel told.” 

“She is the Great Mother,” the hunter said, with disarming simplicity, and he didn’t even correct my pronunciation. “She watches over us, protects us, and cares for us. She is the strength of compassion and merciful justice.”

Heat bloomed in my cheeks at such grandiose comparisons, and I started to stammer a protest, but Revasir shook his head. 

“No, I think so. You care for others, like her. You save them, protect them. There is much gentleness in you, but what you are fighting for—what you are trying to do—it is strong, and just.”

He grinned at me, and tore off another hunk of deer jerky, staring into the fire as he chewed. I’d just about managed to finish mine, with no small effort. My mouth still tasted faintly of blood and salty leather. 

I wasn’t sure if I believed what Revasir said. It was flattery, really. After all, I was no munificent goddess—and certainly no great mother, nor ever likely to be, as far as I knew—but there was enough in his words to strike home… enough to make me think about the Blight, and the Grey Wardens, and all the things that were probably happening beyond the bounds of the forest. 

We had no way of knowing how far the darkspawn horde had travelled. No way of knowing how fast they were moving, or how ill-prepared Ferelden was; had word spread, or was Loghain keeping the whole Bannorn tied to his assertions that the Blight wasn’t a genuine threat? He couldn’t keep that façade up forever, but if news hadn’t hit the north by now, whatever we did would probably come too late… just like the beacon at Ishal. 

I cast a glance across the fire. Alistair was still sitting with Wynne, worry etched into his face as he looked at her. She was pale and seemed a little unfocused. Withdrawn, even. I should have been concerned about her but, in that moment, all I thought about was my fellow Warden. 

It was strange, maybe, but I missed Alistair then; a sudden, violent ache that left me feeling cold and unsteady. I wanted that quiet intimacy back, and the times we’d sat and talked around the fire… and yes, I wanted the comfort of his touch, his lips. I’d never been truly lonely before—there had always been too many people around, or too many things to do—but I felt it then. I felt it like a yawning void in my chest, pulling me down into myself until the air was choked out of my lungs. 

I thought maybe he’d feel it too; that he’d look up and see me, but he didn’t. I looked away again then, silently humiliated, and buried my uncertainty in the fire’s dancing warmth. 

I didn’t expect Revasir to speak again, and his words came through the flickering light like dark stones, hard and polished as the flames licked against them. 

“You lost a husband, didn’t you? When you fought for your clansmate.”

“Betrothed,” I corrected quietly, though it felt a little like the distinction was a betrayal. Nelaros had given his life for me, and I should have honoured that, instead of distancing myself from it… or any of the other things I’d been doing—the other things I wanted—that were probably a disgrace to his memory. “I mean, we never married. We would have, but—”

“Ah.” Revasir’s expression softened, and the firelight glimmered in his eyes, painting shadows across his face that blended eerily with his vallaslin, until the lines seemed to sway together under my gaze. “Had you been intending to bond for a long time?”

I didn’t understand what he meant at first, and I suppose my confusion showed, for he smiled awkwardly and tried again. 

“Your… uh… your courtship?”

_Oh_ .

The Dalish did a lot of things differently to us, I realised. I shook my head hurriedly. “Oh, no. No, no… we… we didn’t really know each other. It was an arranged match. Do, um, do you not… do that?”

The camp was settling for the evening. Morrigan had retreated to sit beside a heavy oak tree, and appeared to be reading one of the books we’d taken from Brother Genitivi’s house, reminding me of the pressure of time on us. Would there be anything left of his trail when we got out of the forest? Was Arl Eamon still alive, even as we sat here? 

Revasir smiled. “No. We choose. The hahrens guide us, of course, but… we choose.  _Vir vhenan_ ,” he added, with an encouraging nod that told me that was meant to be a joke. “Even when it is not entirely suitable, no?”

“I don’t understand,” I admitted, and he nodded again, as if my thin grasp of Elvish could be jollied along with patient enthusiasm. 

“ _Vir Tanadahl_. The Way of Three Trees, as Andruil taught us. _Vir Assan_ ,” he explained, counting off on his thick, knotted fingers, “is the Way of the Arrow, to fly true and not waver. _Vir Bor’Assan,_ the Way of the Bow, to bend but never break, and _Vir Adahlen_ is the Way of the Forest, which teaches we are stronger together than as one. This is how we live. Three pillars, three prayers.” 

Footsteps thumped quietly on the wet leaves as Rhyn and Taen relieved Daeon and Aegan from watch. Daeon looked exhausted, as if every breath the forest took ate away at his nerves and left his bones bare to the night. He slouched over to the fire and threw himself down in front of it with a groan. Leliana had left Deygan’s side briefly, as Wynne moved over to begin another round of healing, and began to rummage for the dry rations we’d brought. It wouldn’t be a magnificent meal tonight, and I suspected Revasir was probably going to offer round the rest of the deer jerky. My stomach griped a bit at the mere thought, even while my mind was still working over this three pillars idea.

I’d never known there was so much to the Dalish way of thinking. It seemed both wonderful and strange… natural and unreal, all at the same time. 

Revasir’s smile widened out as he shook his head, his gaze dropping to the musty ground. “But I am not a teller of words. You should ask Lanaya, the Keeper’s First. She tells the story well.” 

“I will,” I said. “When we get back.”

And that was  _when_ , not  _if_ , I told myself.

We  _would_ get back. 

“So, what is _Vir veenan_?”

“ _Vhenan_ ,” he corrected, looking me in the eye as he tapped the centre of his jack. “Way of the heart. Yes?”

I finally got the joke, and I smiled widely—for once forgetting about my horrible teeth—so proud and pleased to actually understand something. 

“What the heart wants,” I agreed, as he chuckled, indulging my exploration of this new idea. “I get it. That’s… that’s funny. And very true.”

Revasir nodded again, in that animated manner of his. Clearly, not all the hunters were staid, taciturn types like Rhyn and Aegan… and I found I rather liked his enthusiasm. 

“Sometimes, the hahrens get very angry. Say, a boy wants a girl, but he has not yet taken a pelt. If he cannot prove he is a man, how can he show he is good enough, hmm?” He grinned slyly and leaned forwards, his gaze shifting to the edge of our little camp. “Sometimes, that boy, he has _Vir vhenan_ , and he goes to her anyway, and maybe she wants to bond with him too… such things happen, though the hahrens do not really approve. They prefer more organised ways. You know, many, many matches are made at Arlathvhens. That’s where Rhyn met his wife.”

That surprised me. Somehow, it was hard to imagine Rhyn exchanging more than four words with anyone, let alone being married to them. I frowned. 

“What is… Arlathvan?”

“ _Arlathvhen_ ,” Revasir repeated slowly, indulging me. “They are gatherings,” he explained, waving one hand in a loose, all-encompassing sort of gesture. “Different clans, from all over. Everyone. So much happens… apprentices go to new masters. Also, there are, marriages, contracts. Some leave their families to go to new clans, some rejoin their original clans after many years. Big, big celebrations, always. We reunite, as one people.”

It sounded very beautiful. I guess I must have had a little naivety left in me because, in my mind’s eye, it was like the market square in Denerim, but on the biggest feast day ever. It would be full of huge, colourful tents, with merchants’ banners flapping and lots of singing and dancing, and sweet ale and wine… and then I felt very homesick indeed, in the instant before sadness poured into me like water. 

I hunched my shoulders, pulling my cloak tightly around myself. The rain stung my ears slightly as it pattered down on them, and the ground smelled of musky earth. The fire was getting low, choking on damp wood. Across from where we sat, Wynne broke from her care of Deygan to mutter an incantation and send a small burst of flame into its core, cracking the kindling and heating the ash. I noticed Daeon staring suspiciously at her, and also the uncharacteristic glumness with which she glared at the fire. 

But Revasir was still looking at me expectantly, and my mind was still turning over these thoughts of big Dalish gatherings, and what it must mean to give up one’s clan. Funny, really, how near it was to our way of keeping blood fresh. 

“That’s a little like we wed, in cities,” I said, noting the interest that sparked in his face. “Matchmakers arrange things between families and, once an agreement’s struck, the boy or the girl will usually travel to a new alienage to be with their spouse. It makes sure the alienages see new faces… it’s hard to travel otherwise.”

“Yes!” He seemed pleased with that, and he nodded again, his locks shifting in a shimmy of enthusiasm. “I have heard Zathrian say we must not let ourselves grow too intertwined. The People must stay pure, but without letting the old bloodlines grow weak. You know,” he added, with a little more of that conspiratorial air as he leaned closer to me, “Hahren Sarel says we are the last of the old ones. Noble elves of the time of Arlathan. Good blood. Old blood. We owe it to the ancients to preserve that, and to keep safe the old ways. _Vir Assan, Vir Bor’Assan, Vir Adahlen_.”

There was something sad in his face then, as he sat there with his chin tilted high and his eyes fixed so earnestly on me. I wondered if it was true. Were the Dalish I saw before me the remnants of ancient elven aristocracy? I wasn’t sure I liked that idea; it made people like me seem even less important. 

Revasir smiled at me again, and I supposed there was a rumpled, faded kind of glamour to the thought… something that sat well amongst the bare trees and the earthy scent of the forest’s decay. 

Perhaps the forest would swallow them up, years and traditions and all, and wrap them in time until the old ways could be birthed forth once more.


	11. Chapter 11

We didn’t eat badly that night, all things considered. The Dalish had some dry, rusk-like bread—and unfortunately also the deer jerky—but we had dried meat and a little pottage that Leliana made up with the bare minimum of water and a small pouch of meal. 

All the same, it wasn’t an easy rest, full bellies or no. Rhyn and Taen claimed to have found werewolf tracks by the creek. 

“They are close,” Rhyn insisted, as I crouched by the muddy, blurred prints, pretending I could see them as clearly as the Dalish seemed to. “We must move on.”

There were a lot of them. They were like dog tracks, but bigger, and longer… unless that was just the slippage of the mud. I imagined huge creatures, loping on four long legs, with wrinkled snouts like mabaris, and teeth that dripped with drool. 

“We can’t,” I said, as I straightened up, nodding back towards our fire. “Not until morning. And even then someone’s going to have to take Deygan back to camp.”

Rhyn’s perpetual scowl deepened. “There are few enough of us. You would divide your men now, Grey Warden?”

I wanted to smirk at the thought of this motley band being _my_ men. I had no illusions that Taen and the others would follow my command if we were under attack… or, perhaps, that Rhyn would do anything other than act in their interest. Not that I could blame him for that; he was here purely for Witherfang, and his clan. 

“Well?” I said, instead of voicing anything more controversial. “Would you rather leave Deygan to die?”

The hunter’s face was thunderous. Taen glanced nervously at his brother, and then shot me a look that seemed to suggest he thought I was a madwoman. 

“No… but he may yet turn,” Rhyn added, lowering his voice. “I cannot weigh his life against the whole clan’s.”

“He might not turn,” I replied. “You were right; it’s almost impossible to tell what’s claws or bite marks. Anyway, Zathrian said it’s the blood that carries it, didn’t he? Maybe not every bite is enough to spread the curse.”

Footsteps sounded in the brush behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder. Wynne had come to investigate the alleged tracks—or possibly she just wanted a breath of air away from the smell of Deygan’s infected wounds. She nodded at me, and inclined her head respectfully to the hunters. I felt slightly smug, as if she had appeared on cue to support my argument, so I asked her how her patient was doing. 

“He is growing a little stronger,” she said, her voice thin, and those sharp blue eyes dimmed by fatigue. “I have him sleeping, for now. He has a great deal of fight in him, I can tell you that… but whether it is enough to beat the curse, I don’t know.”

Rhyn snorted and muttered something in Elvish, but the mage merely looked calmly at him. 

“He is very badly wounded, that is true. However—” She turned her attention to me, her expression curiously solemn. “—he is fighting it. This is not something I have encountered before… but I do believe he has a chance.”

The discomfort in her face told me that there was something more; something she didn’t want to discuss it in front of the hunters. Taen fidgeted beside his brother, evidently not as wary as Rhyn was of a human mage’s healing. 

“You think you can save him?”

Wynne looked almost apologetic, her hands loosely curled in the worn, travel-stained sleeves of her robe. 

“It is a… a sickness,” she said quietly. “Something that magic may not break, but may aid in fighting. I have done everything I can for Deygan, and he is strong. The Dalish are a strong people,” she added, with a brief glance at Rhyn. “If he receives good care, and if the source of the contamination can be found before it is too late, then yes, I think he may survive.”

“The source? You mean Witherfang?” Taen asked, wide-eyed behind his vallaslin. He looked cautiously at his brother, as if he expected to need Rhyn’s permission to be hopeful. “If the wolf’s heart breaks the curse, like Zathrian said… they’ll all be saved, won’t they? Deygan, and all the rest of them?”

Rhyn didn’t seem convinced. He frowned at Wynne, and then at me, though doubt had already begun to settle in the lines around his eyes. He gave a heavy, resigned sigh. The thick, dim light of the forest’s dark—a cool gloom now, lit only by our fire, and the thin, dying shreds of dusk, soon to give way to a pale moon—clung to his outline, and the lines of his vallaslin seemed to be worn ever deeper into his skin. 

I wondered who his patron god was. Were those Andruil’s arrows on his cheeks, representing the unwavering flight of truth? It must be a wonderful thing, I thought, to have such a strong sense of identity, to belong so completely to his world. I envied him, and I barely realised then how much. 

“Take him back,” I said quietly. “In the morning. If he’s still alive, two or three of you should take him back. Tell Zathrian where we found him, and about the tracks, and tell him what Wynne has said. The rest of us will go on.”

I thought Rhyn would argue, but he didn’t. He just grew tight-lipped and taut-faced, and then he nodded crisply, his eyes heavy with tiredness. 

“You risk much, outsider,” he said darkly, giving me a chary frown. “But Deygan _is_ our clansman. I… will do as you ask.”

He gave me little chance to respond, and moved off back to the fire with Taen bobbing in his wake like a worrity fishing float. I already had my mouth open to thank him with the kind of formal honour I supposed I ought, but I shut it on the words, and an uncomfortable silence lapped around the hunters’ footsteps. 

“I suspect he thinks you want the honour of the kill yourself,” Wynne observed.

_Outsider_ , I’d noticed. Not ‘Warden’ this time. I blinked, distracted. “What?”

Wynne smiled as I looked up at her. “If you do what their Keeper has asked, it will be a great deed.” The corners of those blue eyes crinkled a little as her smile deepened with rather cynical amusement. “I have no doubt the Dalish storytellers will sing of it for years to come.”

I pulled a face. “ _If_. Nothing is ever certain. Still, I suppose we’ve faced worse things.”

A cool breeze snaked through the trees, shaking the droplets of moisture from the fronds of firs and rippling the surface of the muddy creek. The rain had stopped, but everything still felt damp and boggy. 

Wynne just smiled; that same smile that I couldn’t help feeling she was using as a mask. “Indeed,” she said, and there was something in her voice that made me feel exposed. 

I wanted to say she was wrong in what she appeared to imply; to protest that honour wasn’t what I had set out to gain, but… somehow, in that dark little space between the gully and the paw prints in the mud, it was difficult to look the mage in the eye and say I didn’t want the Dalish to know my name. 

I sighed, shook my head, and moved to head back to the fire myself, but Wynne reached out a hand. 

“Just a moment. I… I would like to speak with you.”

There was an odd formality in her tone; a scholar’s crispness that seemed so very different from the warm, compassionate woman I had grown used to seeing her as. It made my back straighten and my heart clench in apprehension. 

“Of course, Wynne. What is it?”

Her fingers curled in on themselves again, her thin hands retreating into the warmth of her robes. Her thick, dark green cloak hung in heavy folds around her, mud splashes a good four inches deep up the hem.

“About the Dalish boy… the curse.” Her sparse grey brows drew together, narrow lips tentatively framing words she seemed afraid of saying. “As far as I can tell, the werebeasts’ curse is not unlike the taint.”

My stomach lurched a little at that. It was unexpected, and I was as revolted as I was surprised. 

“ _Darkspawn?_ ” 

I glanced furtively back towards the fire, anxious that no one should overhear. Wynne nodded.

“Yes…. What that boy is going through now, it’s not unlike what a Grey Warden experiences after the Joining.” Her frown deepened. “I… don’t profess to know much about the ritual, but, as you know, I have been a Senior Enchanter of the Circle for many years. I have an understanding of how the preparations are made, how such complex… _things_ are enacted,” she finished vaguely, the fleeting archness in her voice pleading with me not to ask questions she could not—or perhaps would not—answer. 

A cold feeling traced its way down my back. It wasn’t the first time I’d wondered what dark rites went into the Joining ceremony. There was a chalice, and blood, and magic… and I doubted there could ever be any wholesome combination of those things. But how could what afflicted Deygan be in any way the same? 

Wynne lowered her voice, leaning forwards a little as she tried to explain.

“I think that the curse has a source, and I don’t mean Witherfang’s spirit. I mean… it feels like a kind of magic that has been _made_ , not the kind that simply _is_.”

Suddenly, it seemed hard to forget the experiments Avernus had been conducting up in Soldier’s Peak, knowledge and curiosity corrupted by both time and power. I shuddered. “But who’d make a curse like that? Why?”

Wynne shook her head. “I don’t know. I may be wrong… I hope I am. But, if I am not, we should be wary. I certainly do not think things are as simple as Zathrian wanted you to believe.”

Well, I knew _that_. I crossed my arms over my chest, hugging my middle tightly. “He wants his clan saved,” I said doubtfully, perhaps even a little defensively. “That’s all. I think he’s overestimated the wolves, but… I don’t know. He did say Witherfang is some kind of spirit—a demon, maybe? It’s something a powerful demon could do, isn’t it?”

It made sense: an ancient, vindictive rage demon, as Alistair had supposed from Hahren Sarel’s story.

“It’s possible,” Wynne admitted. “But, whatever the truth of the matter, if Zathrian knew and withheld that information from you, then—”

“He withheld nothing!” I snapped. 

That wasn’t true, though I hadn’t meant to lie when I opened my mouth. 

“I mean… I _told_ Zathrian we would bring him the wolf’s heart, if it can break the curse. He’s had to keep some things back from the clan. Of course he has. They… they didn’t need to know. You saw inside the healer’s tent,” I murmured, that reflexive sharpness dropping from my voice. 

Would we have to kill Deygan before he became a monster? I pushed away the thoughts of the dead, and the little red blossoms the healer’s knife made on the clean bandages. 

Wynne’s mouth pursed, and I supposed I’d been too eager to defend Zathrian… to defend the clan.

“I did,” she said quietly. 

I nodded, and looked cautiously at her. I didn’t want to apologise; I wanted to be right, and to believe that I could trust both the decisions I’d made, and the man who had inspired me to make them. I _would_ bring the keeper the heart of the white wolf—demon or no—and I _would_ have my elven army, even if I couldn’t be a bright, wild creature like one of the Dalish. 

All the same, I still wanted nothing more than to win their respect, their gratitude, and their acceptance… by whatever means I could get it. 

I cleared my throat, made uneasy by the hardness in Wynne’s face and yet even more determined to hold onto my fixed ideas. “Um, but… what you said about Deygan? You said it’s like the Joining. If he survives, you mean he could conquer it?”

Wynne seemed to have difficulty meeting my eye then, and I assumed I understood why. She knew the thing I tried so often to put from my mind: the fact that there was truly no ‘conquering’ the taint. It either killed you at once or, like Alistair and me, you just walked around dying slowly, waiting for the corruption to kick in. 

“I don’t know,” she said with a small shrug. “I suppose it explains why not all the Dalish in the camp were affected the same way. I… I have never seen such a thing before. But I do believe you should tread with care. Zathrian may not have told you everything, and—”

“The Keeper was in a difficult position,” I said hotly, though even I didn’t know why I was so quick to defend him… especially when I knew he’d hidden plenty from the clan. “And why should he trust me completely? I’m not _elvhen_ , I’m travelling with sh— with humans.”

She just looked at me with those sharp eyes closely guarded, and her silence only made me spill out more stupid things.

“You haven’t seemed comfortable with the Dalish from the start,” I said, a little accusingly. “I suppose their way of life is very different to the Circle. Their attitudes to magic.”

Wynne’s gaze grew hard, like glass, and her mouth tightened a little. “I do not disapprove, if that’s what you mean.”

The trees rustled around us, bearing damp needles of wet shaken from the upper branches by the breeze. I bit back the smart retort I wanted to give, suddenly aware that my father had not raised a girl who would show this argumentative disrespect to her elders… and, for all my whole-hearted embracing of the Dalish hahrens and their stories, I still thought of Wynne the same way as the elders I’d known all my life. At least a little bit, anyway. 

I shrugged gracelessly, toeing the mud with my boot. “Well, I guess they’re not the same as the elves you have in the Circle. That’s all.”

We both heard the meaning that sat behind my words. _You don’t know us. You can’t judge us._ I remembered the elven boy who’d first approached us in the Tower, ready to fight to defendthe others. I remembered how brave he’d been: afraid, but not because he was facing humans, merely wary because there was danger. An elf, in fine robes, with magical power at his hands… and, oh, how very strange he’d seemed to me. 

Wynne sighed. She sounded weary, frustrated, and sad. I thought I’d disappointed her, and I glowered at the mud under my feet.

“Perhaps they are,” she said quietly. “But the elves who come to the Circle are not Dalish. They are alienage-born, just like you. Their… mistrust of humans can be just as strong.” 

I looked up at that, already frowning, but any protest—any foolish protest, for how could I dispute _that_?—died unspoken when I saw the haunted expression in her eyes. 

“My first apprentice was elven,” Wynne explained. “All he knew of humans was what he’d seen in the alienage he came from,and it had made him wary. He needed time; time to get used to his new home, time to emerge from his shell… but I was young, arrogant, and impatient. I did not give him what he needed. It was the greatest mis-step of my life.”

She looked down at her robes, her hands emerging from the folds of her cloak to straighten the fabric, brushing ineffectively at the specks of dirt and mud. I wondered if she regretted leaving the Circle Tower, and all the comforts the mages must have had there. 

“I’m sure you didn’t guide him wrong, Wynne,” I said, grappling awkwardly for something soothing to say, because it felt like it was expected of me. 

All the sharpness flooded back into her tired eyes when she looked at me, and it hit me like a slap to the cheek. 

“No,” she said, the word as low and quick as a snake strike. “That’s just it: I did. ‘He is a mage,’ I thought. ‘He needs to grow up and act like one’.” She shook her head. “I expected too much from Aneirin, too quickly. I gave no consideration to his origin, or his feelings. And yet, as he retreated further from me, all I could think of was how stubborn he was… how he was throwing away all his talent and his potential, just to be difficult.”

I didn’t see why she needed to tell me this now. Was it because she was so exhausted, or because the boy had been an elf? Maybe I was supposed to see how hard-headed _I_ was being, or maybe it was her way of telling me she understood. 

For once, I had no idea, and I didn’t care to know. My head was full of Deygan, lying there with a demon’s curse beating in his blood, and the possibility that it was the same magic as the taint I bore… which meant, by extension, that everything Avernus had hinted at was true. The Joining was blood magic, and I was corrupted, and we were all wandering about this wet, filthy forest, waiting to be attacked by terrible creatures, simply because I had thrown my support behind Zathrian. 

All I really wanted was to go and sit by the fire, and hope the beasts that had made the tracks in the mud would stay away for tonight. Instead, I sniffed, and tried to take an interest in Wynne’s story. 

“Was he very talented, then?”

“Oh, yes.” She nodded distantly. “Sometimes, I would catch him practising on his own, but if I asked him to show me what he could do, he would freeze up, or fumble terribly. You cannot plant crops in the cold wintry ground; you cannot teach a student who is closed off and unresponsive. Patience is what I needed, and I learned that too late to help him.”

“Really?” I was growing very slightly irritable with the mage’s parables, though courtesy should have compelled me to try and disguise it a little better.

“Yes,” Wynne said tightly. “Really. All I had to do was listen to him. He tried to talk to me a few times… about the alienage, and about the Dalish. Always the Dalish.” She shook her head again, and turned her face to the dark, damp trees. “He talked of going to find them, talked of the stories he’d heard back in the alienage….”

I bit the inside of my lip. Her words sounded like dry, dusty moralising to me, and it seemed as if the stain of her disapproval had spread out over the camp, and that her very human self-righteousness cast its long, long shadow over my own foolish dreams. 

“Let me guess: one day he did, but they weren’t anything like he thought, and he learned a valuable lesson.” 

“Hmph!” Wynne snorted sharply, the dismissive and angry gesture cutting through my snideness like butter. “That is,” she corrected hesitantly, as if she regretted the denial a little, “I don’t know. Aneirin ran away from the Circle… and _that_ was my fault. I had berated him over some trivial, ridiculous matter that I no longer even remember. A child—barely fourteen at the time—and I drove him away because I did not listen, because I was not patient with him.” 

She hunched her arms around herself, like the night was colder than it really was… or maybe she just felt it more. I shut up, realising for the first time since the mage had begun this tale that it wasn’t a story in her usual vein. She wasn’t telling me this from some desire to educate me, or push me towards seeing my own idiocy; she was spilling a confession. 

“Of course,” Wynne continued, addressing the faceless ranks of the trees, “the templars had his phylactery… the vial of blood they take from each apprentice,” she added, anticipating my lack of knowledge. “Blood is connected to life, and your blood can be used to track you down. And they did. They called him ‘maleficar’, hunted him like a dog… but he was just a child, misunderstood and lost. I begged the templars to tell me if he suffered, if they gave him a quick death. I got no answers from them. I was his mentor and they wouldn’t even tell me what became of him. I… I cannot look at the Dalish we have seen in this forest without thinking of Aneirin. How frightened he must have been, and how far he might have run.”

Her breath misted slightly on the cool air, and it was probably more than my imagination that hinted at the thickness of tears beneath her words. Wynne was such a strong, composed, calm woman; it frightened me to see her crack, although my first impulse was to offer comfort. 

“Maybe he did find a clan,” I said, moving tentatively towards her, and feeling properly guilty now for my self-absorbed unpleasantness. “We could ask, back at the camp. I’m sure someone would know, if—”

She shook her head smartly. “I doubt it. The templars are well-trained and thorough. That he still lives… it would be a vain hope. Besides,” she added, straightening her shoulders and, for the first time since she had spoken of her apprentice, turning to face me, “we have plenty to concern us in the meantime.”

I wrinkled my nose, partially because that was a good point, and partially because I had very rarely seen Wynne look so vulnerable. Not since the Circle Tower, in fact. I remembered her terrible dream: trapped with the bodies of her dead, shackled to the guilt of having failed to protect those for whom she was responsible. I remembered her hands, moving over and over in the ballet of laying out corpses only she could see, and the struggles as Leliana, Alistair and I had tried to convince her to let them go. I had spoken to her of guilt, and acceptance, and moving forward… and had I ever taken my own advice? 

I wondered if she’d seen Aneirin’s body in the Fade. Maybe she saw him every night, the way that—in between the steadily more regular nightmares of red rocks swarming with black bodies, and bloody, mutilated flesh—I still sometimes heard Shianni screaming in my ears when I woke up. 

“You’re right,” I said instead, nodding obediently. “We’ll press on in the morning, once Rhyn and the others have made way with Deygan. If these tracks are as fresh as they seem, the beasts can’t be far now.”

“Indeed.” Wynne took a breath, and smiled faintly at me. “We must move forwards, mustn’t we, and not allow ourselves to become caught up in what might have been.”

I inclined my head for all agreement. I should have known she’d manage to slip a moral in there someplace. 

  
  


_**~o~O~o~** _

  
  


We did not have an easy rest. We took it in turns to take watch, but no one really slept much. Even Maethor kept growling at shadows. 

I woke from a light doze to find the gully lit with the pale twinkle of moon and starlight; eerie bands of grey and blue painted against the blackness of the forest, and the dim circle of our banked-down fire. Leliana was sitting with Deygan again. Sten was a monolithic horizontal bar, on a bedroll the other side of the fire, with Wynne lying not far away. Maethor lay in a scrape nearby, chin on his paws and his ears half-cocked, and the Dalish hunters were packed in as close to the smouldering flames as they could get, top-to-toe like puppies… or like families used to share beds, back home. 

As I sat up, propping myself on my elbow and blinking the fuzziness from my gritty eyes, my gaze settled on Daeon’s upside-down face, all sharp, dark features and a tangle of short hair, his incipient frown and tight mouth evened out by sleep. He looked younger, and it was hard not to remember him as he had been, and, by extension, impossible not to remember Soris, and Shianni, and everybody else. Homesickness hit me hard, right in the centre of my chest, and I thought—for the briefest, most fleeting of moments, before the cobwebs left my head, and I recalled where I was and why—that I might just die of it. 

I caught my breath before it began to race, and reined in my thoughts, as I’d grown so used to doing. The low murmur of voices pulled at my attention, and I looked around… not really realising until my eyes adjusted to the dull patina of the firelight that I was looking for Alistair. I didn’t see him, or Morrigan, but I could see Zevran sitting at the edge of our scraped-together camp, hunkered down on his haunches with Farriel standing behind him. The fire’s dimmed, reddish glow just burnished the edges of their bodies, picking at the tooling on their leathers, and at the beads worked into Farriel’s hair. He was braiding Zev’s hair, I noticed… braiding it in the Dalish fashion, twisting tiny locks and plaits into the pale gold tresses, and working with quick, clever fingers. 

I watched him bend low, fingertips sliding from the softness of hair to the smoothness of skin as he stroked a hand down Zevran’s neck, leaning in to whisper into his ear. 

Zev smiled then, and it seemed a very wide, open kind of smile although, in the dimness, I thought he looked sad. He reached up, caught Farriel’s hand in his, and then there was some complicated, delicate kind of movement that I was sure I must have dreamed—or that perhaps Antivan assassins learned for just this sort of occasion—because Zev had turned, risen, and without the single crack of a twig or scuffle of leaves, had pivoted and pulled the boy to him. They kissed in the way I’d seen them kiss before; all heat and hands, want and balletic magnetism, like both of them knew where the other wanted them to be. Lips, mouths, bodies… I turned my face away, wishing I could lie back down again, pull a blanket over my head and pretend to be asleep. I supposed I could have broken it up, perhaps with the excuse that they evidently weren’t keeping watch very effectively, but I doubted a man of Zevran’s… well, manifold talents… would have struggled much with combining seduction and vigilance. 

I wasn’t sure if I believed the stories about him seducing marks in order to assassinate them once they were off their guard. Or, more correctly, I believed the stories _could_ easily have been true, just not whether Zevran had been telling the truth when he told them. To be honest, as I watched—or, rather, tried _not_ to watch—the progressively more passionate lip-locking going on across the gully, I was even wondering whether he’d seduced the Dalish boy at all. At that precise moment, it was Farriel who was attempting to unlace Zevran’s breeches, and Farriel who had the Antivan’s lower lip snared between his teeth, their two shadowed forms dancing in the quiet glow of the flames, balancing over a precipice between light and shadow. 

It embarrassed me, and left me a little confused… and envious. As Zevran tore away, his lips moving over words I couldn’t hear and his eyes shimmering in the darkness, he looked alive. He looked bright, vital, in a way very like he looked when we were fighting, but without the grim, focused determination of battle. His new Dalish braids hung a little stiffly around his face, and I couldn’t decide whether he was a hunter playing with his prey, or whether Farriel was more a mink than a rabbit. 

The boy glanced over his shoulder then, and I looked away quickly, though he hadn’t even turned in my direction. They stifled their smiles and, with him tugging impatiently at Zevran’s wrist, padded towards the more heavily shadowed embrace of the trees. 

I supposed we should probably all be thankful for at least a little bit of modesty. 

“Hmm… sweet together, aren’t they?”

I glanced up, surprised to find that Leliana was no longer sitting by Deygan’s side, and evidently hadn’t been resting as quietly as I thought she had. She had crossed to the fire, apparently to stretch her legs, and she stood with both hands on the small of her back, her body arched like a bow as she rolled her neck. The flamelight picked dully at her leathers, and turned her hair to golden crimson as she smiled dreamily. 

“Well, that’s one word for it,” I said, getting to my feet, and feeling distinctly crusty in my sleep-stiffened jack. 

Footsteps crunched behind me, the familiar tread signalling Alistair returning to the circle of the camp. I glanced over my shoulder, wanting to know where he’d been—I still couldn’t see Morrigan with us, either—and yet not wanting to ask him. He looked terrible, like a corpse warmed over and pulled along by strings. 

“Not the first one I’d pick,” he commented, wrinkling his nose. “They’re both men, and—”

“And why should that make a difference?” Leliana asked swiftly, her soft, quiet voice holding a sharp, delicately honed edge. 

The twist of amusement at the corner of her mouth saved her from sounding like a shrew though, in that moment, something of her accent did faintly remind me of Lady Isolde. I supposed it was an Orlesian thing… as was the attitude she clearly held to lovers who shared a gender. 

I wasn’t sure what the rest of Ferelden thought but, where I was from, it was normal enough. Something that the boy or girl concerned was meant to grow out of in time to make a good marriage, of course, because for us children were the greatest blessing life could possibly bring, and its ultimate goal. Still, not every marriage was a happy one, and there had always been a handful of confirmed bachelors or spinsters in the alienage, for whatever combination of reasons. 

For my part, it wasn’t something I’d thought about much. When I’d noticed other girls before, my interest had been more envious than curious, and—not having had brothers or sisters who shared my pallet at night—I hadn’t encountered the kinds of casual touches or experimental intimacy that often formed siblings’ first experiences of the flesh in our close-knit, cheek-by-jowl world. 

“I’m not saying it does,” Alistair protested quickly, though the way his cheeks had started to shade to pink made me wonder whether he was lying, or whether it was the subject of romance itself that embarrassed him. 

Maker, he’d even blushed when he kissed me… although I had to admit that the memory of those few, clumsy embraces we’d shared warmed me a little, too. I tried not to think about it and, more importantly, not to catch Alistair’s eye while I oh-so-determinedly wasn’t thinking about it. 

“I should think not,” Leliana said, gently chiding with an air of quiet amusement. “After all, you were raised in a monastery, no? All boys together?”

“What? No! No, I— Well, I mean, I… well, _yes_ , there was quite a bit of… er. I mean… not _me_ , but… um,” he finished lamely, with an awkward cough lingering at the back of his throat. “That’s not the point. What I _meant_ was that ‘sweet’ isn’t really the first word I’d associate with Zevran. He’s an assassin, and he tried to kill us.”

He looked expectantly at me then, as if I needed reminding that it had been my decision to bring Zev with us in the first place. Mild annoyance trickled within me; after all, Alistair had hardly been willing to slit his throat and leave him in the mud. 

I shrugged, rubbing my arm absently in defence against the cold. The leather strappings wound around the limb felt rough and strange under my fingers… almost as strange as the whispers of crackling leaves and creaking boughs that so disorientated me from within the black-stained shadows of the forest.

“I’m not even sure it’s our business. Besides, Farriel _does_ want to help.”

Alistair didn’t look pleased at that. I suspected he’d wanted me to disapprove of something… I just wasn’t sure quite what. 

“You knew about it? About them?” 

Ah, there it was. That slight breath of accusation in his tone. I screwed up my face. 

“I was… aware. Why? Is it so awful?”

“So you told him he could come with us, then?”

I frowned, surprised by his sharpness, and surprised by how like aggression it sounded. “No. I told him if Zathrian willed it, I couldn’t object—and you can see can how far that one got me.”

Leliana cleared her throat delicately. “I should… see if…. Change the dressings,” she murmured, and I’d barely even noticed her backing away until she’d almost crossed the gully. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Alistair said, rather snidely, as he turned to face me full-on. “It’s hard to tell. You seem very… cosy with them, that’s all.” 

It was hard to make out his features in the darkness. Everything was blurred and grainy, just like the boundaries between us, and I wasn’t sure whether I was tired, or angry, or just very alone. Maybe all of those things. 

The only part of Alistair that seemed to shine in the gloom was his eyes. I could see the white of them catch the dim firelight, and I didn’t miss his glance over to where Revasir and the other hunters lay, still slumbering like a nest of pups. 

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with them,” he added, his words carrying the trace of a sulky huff, though we were both keeping our voices low. 

“I want to know as much I can learn,” I said defensively. “Why shouldn’t I?”

A night breeze rippled through the canopy, and though I should have been used to them by now—all these sighs and groans of the forest—the tracks by the creek made everything seem more real. Yellow eyes seemed to burn in every shadow.

“Because you’re—” Alistair bit the word in two, swallowing down whatever it was he wanted to say and cloaking it all in a shake of his head and a hunch of his shoulders. “No. It doesn’t matter. I just… I think you should be careful. You’re still an outsider to them, just like we are.”

“I’m elven,” I pointed out. “ _Daeon’s_ elven. Even flat-ears like us can learn.”

“Huh.” Alistair frowned, his mouth puckered into a morose pout that made me quite sad he’d shied away from the confrontation. “Hey, why do they call you that, anyway?” He squinted at me suspiciously. “Your ears aren’t any different to theirs.”

I smiled mirthlessly, partly because I knew he wouldn’t like hearing the answer, and partly because humans never could see the differences in two elves’ ears. 

“They think we’re like you. That we may as well not have our points. That our ears deserve to be flat,” I added, seeing his confusion. “Round and flat, like yours. That’s all it means. The opposite of ‘knife-ear’. See?”

He nodded hesitantly, but he looked like the words had physically hurt, that they’d burned or scratched into his flesh, and when he opened his mouth, nothing came out except the strangled start of speech, just grazing the cold air between us. 

“Wh— I….”

“What?” 

“Well….” Alistair looked embarrassed. “That’s not true.”

I shrugged. Across our little rag-tag camp, Deygan was stirring weakly on his bedroll, and Leliana had gone to wake Wynne. Taen rolled over in his sleep, and, by the tree line, the faint rustle of the undergrowth presaged the emergence of a rather dishevelled and yet extremely cheerful-looking Farriel. 

There were a good few hours of darkness left. I suppose I thought I could hide things in them. 

“The stories say it was living close to humans that made the ancients lose their immortality,” I said dully, keeping my voice low, and not quite looking at Alistair’s face, even as the words tumbled out of me with a child’s stubborn, obsessive enthusiasm. “We quickened… grew old and weak. That’s why the Dalish stay so far apart from humans, and they live longer because of it. Did you know that? The stories all say that, and it’s true. The clan say Zathrian has devoted many years to recovering the arts of the Old Ones. Rhyn says he’s been their keeper for more than a century.”

It was only a rumour. I didn’t think I even believed it… and, if I did, I doubted it was a good thing.

Alistair shook his head. “That can’t be true.”

“Can’t it?” I lofted a brow. “Sophia Dryden’s body was still walking around Soldier’s Peak. Tell me the things we’ve seen are stranger.”

He frowned again. “That was blood magic… demons. You don’t think—?”

Blood. Everything seemed to be about blood. The taint, the curse… Avernus’ horrible experiments. Everything was blood and corruption, and there seemed to be nothing but an invincible mire ahead of us, where any tiny bit of good we did was a light snuffed out immediately in the mud. 

“Has Wynne talked to you about Deygan?” I asked, peering carefully at Alistair through narrowed eyes. _About the Dalish?_

I doubted she’d told him the story of her lost apprentice. At first, I’d assumed she would have done—they were close, after all; close enough for me to feel a childish pang of jealousy at all the hours they spent sitting together, with him hanging on her words like an eager schoolboy—but her tale hadn’t dulled at the edges like something often repeated. Besides, as so often seemed hard to believe, Alistair had almost been a templar. I doubted Wynne would have been quick to lay the burden of an innocent child’s death at his feet, knowing how easily he acquired guilt. It was like a wick on spilled oil with him. 

“No,” he said cautiously. “Why?”

I glanced over towards the fire. Zevran had returned to us as well, and the watch was changing over. Wynne muttered an incantation and tossed a thin gout of flame onto the fire, causing it to crackle and swell briefly. The smell of woodsmoke and charred sap burst in the air. 

“She said the curse is like our taint,” I said, keeping my voice as low as I could. “Something… _made_. Maybe by a demon… I think that’s what we’re dealing with. That’s what Zathrian’s afraid of.”

Alistair said nothing, but he looked at me for a long while, his mouth firmly set and his brow deeply scored by a frown. 

“Meri…,” he began finally, but I never heard what he wanted to say. 

Across the gully, Maethor leapt up from his scrape beside the fire, already giving vent to a tremendous snarl. 

I turned and ran to see what had startled the hound, my hand already going for my blade, and there was a whole collision of activity as the camp splintered and spun into movement. 

At first, it was impossible to see what had caused the commotion—I’d seen and heard nothing—but then there was a glimmer of something in the trees, some shadow among the shadows, and I heard a growl that wasn’t Maethor. 

I had my dagger in my hand. My sword was still by my bedroll—stupid of me to leave it there. It was too dark to see, too cold to smell anything but the fire and the pungent tang of grease and leather… and mud. And then I saw it. It burst through the briars and the bushes then: just a pale streak with a deep, bone-shaking growl.

A wolf. 

A huge, white wolf that sprung from nowhere and cannoned into the camp like no animal ever should. Maethor was going crazy, lunging and baying, and he went straight for it, but the thing barely seemed to notice him. There was a mad scuffle of fur—a brindled body against that rank pelt of pale, ragged grey—and I heard the mabari yelp. An arrow vibrated through the air close by me, and there was another canine scream, but not from my hound. I hadn’t even realised there was more than one wolf but, as I turned, panicked and wrong-footed, I saw Aegan nocking another arrow as Rhyn pitched to the ground beneath another pale body. 

The air parted with that soft, deadly whisper, and Aegan’s second arrow embedded itself in the wolf’s neck. Rhyn kicked the corpse off himself savagely, levering it away with his shield, and he pointed to the trees as he yelled something in Elvish. 

I ducked through the press of people, anxious about Maethor, and almost got myself knocked flying in the chaos… and then it was all over. 

As quickly, as madly as it had begun, there was a wild yelp, followed by sudden silence. I stood in the flickering light of the fire, and stared at Farriel, kneeling over the bloodied body of the white wolf, with his knife in his hand and a dark, hard smile on his face. He had its scruff clenched in one fist, the beast’s head pulled back to bare its throat, and its blood was still leaching onto the ground. 

Footsteps crashed in the leaves as the hunters established there had been no more than these two creatures, and I glanced to the side, seeing Sten crouching beside a cowed and bitten Maethor. The hound’s broad, strong back end was shaking lightly, and he was licking his wrinkled nose. Fear rose up in me as I saw the dark wetness on his shoulders and haunches. 

Farriel released the dead wolf’s head and stood, eyeing the other Dalish coldly. He sneered as he looked at Rhyn. 

“There. Is that pelt enough for you, _da’len_?”

Rhyn scowled, but I could see even in the dimness that he had turned pale. He muttered and shook his head, but I didn’t understand the fear that seemed to cloud his eyes. 

“What _were_ those?” Leliana asked, as the hunters began to pull the bodies clear. “There weren’t ordinary wolves. Look at the size of them. And no animal would just attack like that….”

I was kneeling by Maethor, holding his head as he moaned sorrowfully, and Wynne inspected the bites he had received. I glanced up as Revasir spat into the fire, scowling darkly. 

“Messengers,” he said shortly. “Witherfang’s messengers. The white wolves are his kin, or so it is said. His eyes and ears in the forest. Not werebeasts; something else entirely.”

I breathed a sigh of relief as the mabari nudged his snout into my palm, and I rubbed at his soft, crinkled ears. 

“If those weren’t weres, he’s not in danger from the curse… right?”

Wynne looked at me across the dog’s broad back, her eyes ringed with such heavy shadows that they looked bruised. 

“Let’s hope so,” she said, summoning a thin glow of light that enveloped her palm. 

Maethor whined and pressed his head against my shoulder. 

“On the plus side,” Alistair announced, surveying our scuffled, damaged camp, “at least we can be sure the big scary demon wolf knows we’re here. So, you know… that’s good.” 

Daeon was the only one of the hunters who smiled bitterly. The others just looked at Alistair like he was a crazy shem and, shaking their heads, carried on with the business of making sure no one else had been bitten, and pulling their arrows from the bodies. 

It was going to be a long wait until dawn. 


	12. Chapter 12

Morrigan rejoined us a little before first light, slinking in like a bedraggled cat. She looked rough and torn at the edges, as if she hadn’t slept at all, and I saw Alistair glowering fiercely at her. 

The preparations were underway to get Deygan moved back to the Dalish camp, though I wasn’t sure whether he truly was fit enough for it. Wynne had been working on him for some time, while the hunters were arguing about who would go and who would stay to press on with the rest of us. I was tired of hearing them snipe over it, but it wasn’t my place to make the decision for them. I doubted they’d have listened to me if I’d tried to weigh in, anyway. 

Alistair and I were near the blackened, doused scar of the fire, readying to get going, and still caught in the same stiff, unyielding awkwardness that had plagued us the night before. I could tell how heavily his misgivings about this whole endeavour sat on him, and his attempts to back away from arguing about it had been so transparent and clunky—so stained with what tasted to me like disapproval and maybe even jealousy—that I barely wanted to talk to him at all.

He, however, had other ideas.

“I don’t trust her,” Alistair muttered, still scowling at Morrigan as he tightened his boots.

“You’ve never trusted her,” I reminded him, but he just snorted. 

“I don’t mean that. I mean… well, where did she go last night? She wasn’t in camp, and when I went looking for her—”

So that’s where he’d been. I didn’t much care for the thought of him following Morrigan through the woods, and it probably showed on my face. 

“What?” he asked, frowning petulantly as I wrinkled my nose. “Well, she was doing _that_ again. You know. Wilder magic.”

“Shapechanging?” I folded my arms across my chest, affecting a nonchalant shrug. It wasn’t as if we didn’t know what she could do, after all, and he’d suspected it since the beginning.

“Mm.” He nodded. “I lost track of her after a while, but she damn well wasn’t wearing feathers. That’s my point.” 

I wanted to ask what he meant by that—and I wanted to ask what in the Maker’s name he’d thought he was doing, wandering off when we _knew_ how dangerous the forest was—but light Dalish feet stirred the dried leaves behind me and, with a pang of resignation, I heard Rhyn’s bitter tones. 

“You think you have a tame witch,” he muttered, as I turned to find him scowling at the pair of us. “A foolish belief.”

There hadn’t been much to have in the way of breakfast, but Leliana had worked her own wonders with a seasoned oatmeal gruel, the lingering aroma of which still hung on the crisp air. It grew stronger as Sten drew closer, carrying the newly rinsed cooking pot back from the creek. He’d evidently overheard, for his eyes narrowed as he inclined his head slightly in the hunter’s direction. 

“Something I have said on many occasions,” he observed dryly. 

The modicum of respect Sten seemed to accord Rhyn had not escaped me, and I had to admit I was a little jealous. I wasn’t sure I completely accepted the beliefs he held about the terrible dangers of magic—especially given the number of times it had saved my life—but I did appreciate the sentiment. Even _I_ wasn’t naïve enough to trust Morrigan completely. Nevertheless, she’d given me no real cause to doubt her loyalty and, as she sat, hunkered down at the edge of the camp while the others busied themselves with the preparations for moving on, she looked so exhausted that I couldn’t help feeling a little protective of her. 

“Morrigan’s been of great help to us,” I said, as Taen came to join us, moving to Rhyn’s side like a silent acolyte, his eyes wide and his mouth a thin, small scar across his face. He watched me intently, and I supposed the Dalish must have made their choice over who was going and who was staying. I nodded to him, then turned my attention back to Rhyn. “Besides, your keepers use magic. There’s no Circle of Magi out here, so what makes Dalish mages so different to someone like her?” 

“Well, she _is_ an evil bi—” Alistair began, breaking off as I shot him a reproachful look. 

He shrugged churlishly, and I was aware of Taen muttering something in a blend of Common and Elvish that I found very hard to follow. I only caught one word: _Asha’bellannar._

“What’s that?” I wanted to know, but he just shook his head and, turning slightly, spat into the dead leaves at his feet… just like the old folks used to do, back in the alienage. 

“She took wolf form,” Rhyn said shortly. “Your creature. Last night: she became the wolf. Perhaps _she_ brought Witherfang’s messengers here, did you consider that?”

“What?” I stared. “Morrigan wouldn’t—”

Alistair sighed tersely. “That’s what I was trying to tell you. She was… furry. With teeth. I didn’t see where she went, but it’s not—”

I held up my hands. “Enough. Everybody. Just… I’ll speak with her. _I_ will speak with her, all right?” I added, with a sharp look at Alistair. “I’m sure, whatever she was doing, she had her reasons. And… honestly? If Morrigan meant us harm, we’d have been dead a long time ago.”

Rhyn curled his lip, showing a hint of small, pale teeth as his eyes hardened. I didn’t look at Alistair, but I heard his bitter huff of breath. He would probably be sulking for hours.

“If I were you, _Grey Warden_ ,” Rhyn said darkly, the air misting a little before his mouth, curling around the disdain with which he injected his words, “I would be wary. Does that not mean she merely has a purpose for you?”

“Perhaps. But it’s my concern, not yours.”

He glared at me, his eyes widening almost imperceptibly at the slight: probably just as surprised as me by my rudeness. The strength of my words—the lingering venom in them, even—thickened the air between us, and Rhyn’s mouth grew tighter, the way a dog tenses before it snaps. 

“Then maybe it is well we part now,” he said curtly. “No wise man treads in the steps of a fool.”

I was starting to see why he and Sten appeared to get on so well. All the same, I couldn’t just let it go. He’d riled me too much for that. 

“Oh? And I thought _I’d_ been following you, hunter.”

Taen looked back and forth between the two of us, his face etched with the pained desperation of a small child that either needs to relieve itself, or wants to intervene in an older boys’ argument, and doesn’t know how. 

“ _Lethallin_ ,” he said, raising a hand to his brother’s elbow as Rhyn looked fit to either punch me or curse me. “ _Hamin, lethallin_. Come… if we start early, there will be less ground to make up.”

They were going, then. I was relieved, though I knew how stupid that was. Rhyn was easily the most capable fighter, the strongest leader… I shouldn’t have been so pleased to see the back of him. Of course, I shouldn’t have been butting heads and picking fights, either, but such wisdom seemed so remote to me then. 

He snorted, his breath coiling on the cold air. “All right. You understand this, Warden? Taen and I will take Deygan back to the camp. We can manage with just the two of us.”

“If you’re sure,” I said uncertainly, which earned me a dirty look. 

“Yes. The others have elected to remain,” Rhyn added scornfully, his mouth bowed into a sneer. “Taen and I will speak to Zathrian of what we have seen. He must know. Here, Revasir will leave signs along your path. When Deygan is returned to the clan, my brother and I will re-enter the forest, and we will try to catch you up… if you remain to be caught.”

“Oh, good. Yes,” Alistair agreed dryly, his voice just a little louder than necessary, as if to remind us elves of his presence. “If not, maybe you could just bury as many bits as you can find? That’d be great. We’d appreciate it.”

I ignored him, much as the Dalish did—though Taen’s look of discomforted worry flickered slightly into incomprehension—and nodded my approval.

“Fine. We’ll leave as much as we can open for you, and I doubt we’ll move much quicker than we have been doing, even if the beasts know we’re here. It’s not as if there’s anywhere we can run,” I admitted, my bravado sinking a little as, for the first time, I realised just how disadvantaged and trapped we were going to be, especially with two fewer bodies on our side. 

Still, if Witherfang—whatever it was—knew we were here, and his white wolves had found us once already, just why _hadn’t_ we been wiped out? Maybe, as Rhyn had said of Morrigan, it just meant that someone had a plan for us. However, when that someone was potentially an ancient and probably demonic werewolf, the thought hardly filled me with glee. 

I tried not to think about it, and concentrated on holding Rhyn’s gaze as he continued to glare at me. I used to see boys posture and strut at each other like this all the time back home. Part of me was faintly, ridiculously amused at being a participant this time, but that sense of mirth was soon diminished. 

“ _Ma dirth_ ,” Rhyn said, his shoulders relaxing slightly. He glanced over to where Wynne and Leliana were wrapping Deygan in blankets, preparing him for as comfortable a journey out of the forest as possible. “We will leave soon. Creators guide you,” he added, giving me one last—and surprisingly unchallenging—look, before hitching up his belt and striding off across the remnants of the camp. 

Taen still lingered uncertainly, wincing a little as he looked at me. 

“ _Abelas_. It is Rhyn’s way to… to—”

_Be an arsehole?_

“I understand,” I said instead. “And I swear I will do everything I can to end this right. You have my word.”

He inclined his head. “ _Dareth,_ ” he said, looking sadly at me and then, to my surprise, at Alistair. “Be safe, Grey Wardens. Our clan’s hearts go with you.”

He loped off after Rhyn, who was already conversing with—or possibly just barking orders at—Revasir. 

Alistair cleared his throat. “Well, that was… bracing. Have you got a knife on you?”

I glanced at him, frowning in confusion, my mind still elsewhere. “Why d’you need a—”

“Oh, I’d just like to try cutting this atmosphere, that’s all.”

The words dripped with his customary sarcasm, but there was a note of disapproval in his voice, and a hardness in his face that I found difficult to bear. The hazel eyes I’d seen filled with such warmth were narrowed against the weak, low sun that lanced through the trees, and Alistair seemed distant somehow, like he was making a conscious effort not to say what he was thinking. 

I marshalled a weak smile, and mumbled something about checking my pack, all too eager to turn away. 

_**~o~O~o~** _

I stood by the thick trunk of an old, weathered oak, watching them go. Rhyn and Taen had Deygan slung behind them on a makeshift stretcher cobbled together from a couple of blankets and a few branches, and I watched the hunter’s prone body loll gently as they carried him… we all watched. We watched until they were out of sight, and we could no longer see Rhyn’s hunched shoulders, or that sullen scowl still fixed to his face. 

Whether Deygan lived or died, the rest of us were now two blades worse off than we had been, and with the forest pressing in on us from all sides… not that there was time to dwell on it. 

“This way,” Revasir said, pointing between the trees. He was remarkably prosaic about the whole thing, I thought. 

He took the lead, with Zevran and Farriel skirting close behind him. Morrigan stalked behind on the right, stabbing at the ground with her staff, while Maethor made his usual sweeping patterns, weaving in and out of the brush and investigating as many smells as he could. Leliana and I were in the middle of the group, with Daeon and Aegan, and Wynne walked a little to one side, being shepherded solicitously by Alistair. Sten seemed to drop behind slightly, and more than once I caught him staring up at the trees, his face drawn even tighter and darker than usual. I wondered what he was thinking about, but I didn’t ask. I knew I needed to find a moment to talk to Morrigan, too, and I wasn’t looking forward to that. In fact, no one seemed to feel like conversation. We walked in near silence. After a while, soft rain began to rattle the canopy again, although it wasn’t as if the mood could have been dampened much further. 

The land seemed to change around us again, and I had yet to get used to that sensation. It reminded me of the ride from Denerim with Duncan: the first time I’d ever left the city in my life. Then, I’d felt the trees were almost creeping up on me, the landscape shifting like a live thing instead of remaining still as we careened across it. I also remembered Hahren Sarel’s words about the forest being its own creature, and the two impressions sat uneasily beside each other in my mind. Still, as we pushed on, the ground grew less uneven, and the trees seemed to thin. 

That surprised me. I had expected that, the deeper we pressed into the forest, the thicker everything would become. Instead, there were mossy cuts and gullies, and we briefly passed whole clearings where you could see the sky. I felt less threatened by the trees, and went so far as to remark that, even with the rain, this part of the forest seemed beautiful. 

Aegan shot me a disdainful look, his thick blond knot of hair fuzzy and beaded with moisture. “You know why there are fewer trees here?” he asked, his words clipped and his eyes hard. 

I sighed inwardly, gathering that I’d got it wrong yet again. “No. Why?”

He jutted out his chin in an expression of righteous pride—getting another one over on the shem-witted flat-ear, I surmised—and he nodded at the ground we walked on, so thickly carpeted with the softness of moss and leaf litter. 

“All this? Many years ago, when the shemlen brought their war… all burned. All destroyed. The west of the forest used to extend much farther. Where we walk now, thousands died. This was all battlefields. All bones. All corpses. Now, it is _setheneran_. We tread on the edges of the Beyond.”

His words nudged at the discomfort hanging in the air, and I saw recognition on the faces of Wynne and Morrigan: the silent admissions of mages who felt the darkness in this place, no matter how quaintly dappled its light. I pursed my lips. 

“Yes, well… bloodshed makes the Veil thin. We saw it at the Circle Tower, too, and Redcliffe. Demons,” I added, emphasising the word. “There was an abomination in Redcliffe, and dozens of them in the Tower. We killed all the demons, destroyed the corruption. It _can_ be done.”

Aegan said nothing, and just kept looking straight ahead. Daeon, however, slipped me an admiring glance. 

“Really? _Dozens_ of demons?” 

I shrugged, starting to regret my bragging. “Well… there were a lot.”

“Scores,” Zevran chimed in shamelessly. “So I hear, although this was before I joined the Warden’s party. There had been a terrible rebellion among the mages. Our good friend Wynne here was one of the few to withstand it—blood magic, you know, and the most unspeakable horrors, of course—but the Warden slew the perpetrators heroically. Stood upon a pile of corpses, her blade smoking with the corrupted blood of the fallen… you know how it is. I, naturally, was not remotely surprised to learn of the details. I _have_ , after all, seen her in action.”

Farriel was gazing at him raptly, his mouth curved into a look of intent, hungry interest, like a child ready to devour tales of dragons and princes. 

I groaned. “It… it really wasn’t quite like that. We—well, we were all—”

“It was a painful ordeal,” Wynne said shortly. “I lost many friends. But, it is true, without the help you gave us, we would all have perished.” 

She was looking at Alistair when she spoke, and I felt both insensitive for bringing the subject up at all, and also firmly put in my place. Aegan made a small noise in the back of his throat. 

“At least you’ve wet your feet in blood, outsider. I hope it prepares you.”

I frowned grumpily to myself, taking thorough offence at his off-handedness. As far as I had pieced together, the Dalish hunters chased game no bigger than wolves or boar. I had faced demons, walking corpses, darkspawn… even a Void-taken _ogre_. He had no right to belittle me—to belittle any of us. And yet, for all I’d done and all I’d seen, I knew I couldn’t draw an arrow as quickly as the Dalish could, or move as quietly through the trees, or scythe my blade with such speed and accuracy. Everything I’d done up until that point felt like luck, not honed skill, and it was that which kept my lips sealed and my gaze downcast. 

_**~o~O~o~** _

We walked for an age… and at least _that_ felt normal. There was almost a kind of peace in it; rhythms that were beginning to seem natural. Revasir led us through the trees, and I watched the light dapple the soft ground. Whatever Aegan said, I still thought it was beautiful. Everyone seemed to have relaxed slightly, too: we spread out a bit, and it was as if the less dense tree coverage gave us room to breathe. The Dalish seemed very at home, anyway. Once, a low call broke through the air, drifting distantly from what I thought was the west. Revasir looked up like a dog scenting the air, then grinned broadly and said something in Elvish to Aegan. I picked out the word ‘halla’, and the name of Hahren Elora, their herdmistress, so I guessed there must be some of the white deer-things living wild nearby. 

No one said anything else, though Farriel gave a loud, bored sigh, and kicked half-heartedly at a tree root. We walked on, the rhythm only broken every time Revasir paused to leave one of the trail signs Rhyn had mentioned, cut into the bark of a tree. I didn’t bother trying to read them. They just looked like scuff marks to me.

“So,” Daeon said, at length, falling into stride beside me. 

I blinked, the sound of his voice cutting through my thoughts, and tried my best to seem nonchalant. I raised an eyebrow. “So?”

He glanced back over his shoulder, as if to assure himself no one was eavesdropping. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that most of my companions had ears that would put a bat to shame, no matter how many paces there were between us. Picking up on gossip, banter, arguments, and lively debates had become important skills in passing the long, dreary hours of travel.

“Well…. I’m curious, that’s all.”

“About what?” I asked, picking my way over the tussocks and tree roots. 

Daeon rolled his eyes. “ _You_ , you ass! And this Grey Warden business.”

“Oh.” I had to admit, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen that one coming. I shrugged as lackadaisically as I could. “I told you the story.”

“No, you told us what _happened._ ” He slipped me a sly sidelong glance. “You never said much about the Wardens. What, this human just recruited you? Swooped down off a magic carpet? And what in the Creators’ name happened at that battle in the south?”

I winced a little to hear him speak of Dalish gods. It felt strange; like a malformed echo in an empty room. I welcomed it, I supposed. I didn’t want either of us to remind me too much of home. 

“I told you,” I repeated stubbornly. “There really wasn’t anything more to it. Duncan had been to a lot of places, recruiting for the Wardens. I wasn’t the only one from Denerim.”

A momentary vision of Daveth passed behind my eyes: the man who’d reminded me so much of the boys at home, with dirty knees and perfectly combed hair. Even looking back then—Maker, even looking back _now_ —it felt strange to think someone so irrepressible should have died so easily, and it was hard to keep from wondering how we’d have fared if he’d survived the Joining. Maybe Alistair would have been forced to step up to command, if only to keep the rogue in line, or maybe Daveth himself would have taken charge. For all I knew, he’d have done no worse a job than me… or what if both he and Jory had lived? What if I’d died, or if all of us had? The possibilities I’d tried so hard not to cram my head with clamoured for attention, and I pushed them all away. There was no sense in wondering, anyway. 

Above us, the tree branches creaked gently in a light breeze, and a few russet leaves filtered down to the soft forest floor. Somehow, it didn’t feel as cold as it had done, and I supposed that was something to be thankful for.

“Army recruiters don’t go to alienages,” Daeon said pointedly. “What’d be the point? Elves can’t join up. We have no place in an army, except as servants or wh—”

“The Grey Wardens don’t make a distinction,” I said, breaking in before I could hear that damn word again. “You know, some of their greatest warriors have been elven. Like Garahel, who ended the Fourth Blight.”

Daeon smirked. “Right. Children’s stories and legends.”

“They’re not just stories.” 

“No?” He snorted, glancing across at Alistair, who appeared to be having trouble with the undergrowth, and had just stumbled over a briar. “Hm.”

“What?” I didn’t much care for his tone, or the hardness in his face when he looked at my friend. 

“Makes no difference what you call it. Still, it’s a good life for a woman, is it?” Daeon drawled, shifting his gaze slyly back to me. “Good way of keeping yourself?”

Once, shame might have pricked at me with those words. It was clear enough what he meant—what he thought. I bridled slightly, if only because I believed I’d been so subtle. I knew my keeping Alistair at arm’s length since we’d entered the camp had been cruel, and probably a horrible mistake, but I truly thought I’d guarded my secret. I had, hadn’t I? I hadn’t seen the looks of accusation I was so afraid of on the faces of Dalish women… or maybe they _did_ all think it was true, and simply didn’t care, because I wasn’t one of them to start with. 

That thought stuck with me, coarse as brambles and bitter as pitch. Still, I had too much anger in me to waste on being embarrassed. I shrugged crisply. 

“Huh. S’all right. Except for the Blight, the darkspawn, the civil war… the fact our entire order got massacred at Ostagar. Up until then, it was just fine.” 

Daeon pursed his lips. “Civil war?” 

He listened as I gave him a brief account of Ostagar, Loghain’s betrayal, and everything we knew of that had followed. I might not have been as objective as I could, or made clear _quite_ how much of our information relied on conjecture, but it was a succinct summary.

“So, that’s what you’re going to do, is it?” Daeon looked doubtful. “Try to hammer a few allies together, throw yourselves at the darkspawn, and hope you’ll win?”

“Well, we don’t have much choice.”

He snorted. “You don’t have much chance, either. You need numbers, woman! What about sending word to the Free Marches?”

I shook my head. “Unlikely. There’s not enough time… and we’d still have to _get_ a message there. There were supposed to be reinforcements coming from Orlais, but it looks like Loghain pushed them back. Or something.”

Massacred them, more like, but I didn’t say so. Perhaps part of me was still holding onto the improbable hope that other Wardens would come from somewhere and fix everything… or at least tell us what in the Maker’s name we were meant to be doing. 

Daeon had fallen strangely silent. I squinted at him, and saw his lips moving soundlessly while he frowned. 

“Thirteen,” he said eventually. “I think. Thirteen clans that travel Ferelden, the Marches, and pretty much up to the Orlesian borders. If Zathrian sent runners _and_ caught them all before they’ve crossed the sea, that’s… what? I know some clans are bigger’n others, but… seven, eight hundred Dalish, easy. Maybe more. That’s an army right there, Tabris.”

I nodded glumly. “Maybe.”

“What?” Daeon’s mouth moved in a sharp slice of a smile, curled at one corner. “You don’t think you can do what the Keeper asked? This Witherfang is one demon. You’ve fought _dozens_.”

To the right of us, I heard Zevran’s stifled snigger, and I grimaced. 

“Anyway,” Daeon said brightly, “if Redcliffe’s on your side, you have those troops, plus whatever of the Bannorn is loyal to this Eamon. That’s how it works, isn’t it?”

“Near enough,” I said, though frankly I had no idea. I still possessed an elf’s view of politics—that smaller holdings did what bigger holdings said, regardless of personal or historical alliances, simply because it was common sense—and any kind of nuance to the system passed me clean by. Besides, being born and bred in Denerim, I had very little understanding of what _did_ lay out there. The dozens of arls and banns were unknown names to me, their lands nothing more than lines on a map I still couldn’t really read. 

I cleared my throat, aware somehow of Alistair’s gaze on my back, his scrutiny like the uncomfortable warmth of midday sun. 

“That’s, uh, that’s assuming Arl Eamon can be cured, of course,” I mumbled. “We… we need to, er, work… on that.”

Daeon grinned cheerfully, scuffing up the dried leaves with the toe of his Dalish boot. “Hah… after this? Come _on_ … you finish off a demon wolf and cure a cursed plague, one shem’s fever’ll be a breeze!”

I smiled uncomfortably, and wished he’d shut up. 

Ahead of us, Revasir suddenly held up a hand, dropping into a warrior’s stance with his blade half-drawn. Maethor growled softly and, as the rest of us stilled, I saw something move in the trees. It was a white shape and, for a brief, hopeful moment, I thought maybe it was a halla, but there was no mistaking the predatory, slinking gait. 

It was one of the white wolves. It moved like silvered light through the trees, a good forty yards ahead of us, though it wasn’t coming any closer. Aegan had an arrow nocked and sighted, quick as a breath, but Revasir motioned him to hold. 

“They have been following us for a while now,” Zevran remarked quietly. “See? On the top of the ridge.”

He nodded his head very gently towards the cut bank that curved away from us to the right, a scar running across the gentle swell of the land, perhaps about five or six feet high. The great masses of tree roots—ancient monoliths overturned years ago by long-forgotten storms—had formed an earthen embankment, upon which new growth had thrived, the old roots curling through it and poking out like coiled ropes. I caught my breath as I saw another pale shadow shimmer between the straight trunks of young firs and birches. 

We were being watched, and stalked like prey. 

“How many?” I murmured.

Revasir glanced back at me and held up four fingers. 

“We took them before,” Farriel said, drawing his dagger. “What are more of these dogs? Let them come!”

“ _Brasca_!” Zevran snapped, with a sharpness that surprised me. “Don’t be a fool. Sheath your knife and shut your mouth, _da’assan_. They are waiting. Watching, and waiting. They do not mean to attack this time… but they will not be alone.”

Maethor took that opportunity to throw back his head and howl: a real, squealing, echoing peal of sound that seemed to twist and shake from his jaws. It was horrible. He backed up as the rest of us drew together in a circle, assuming that defensive stance we’d begun to get so well honed—and which made the divisions between us and the Dalish woefully apparent—and the hound’s paws scrabbled on the leaf litter. His tail and ears were clamped down flat, and strings of drool dribbled from his mouth as he puffed out small, high-pitched whines. I heard the soft, metallic hiss of Sten’s sword leaving its sheath, and he said something to Maethor in his own tongue. 

It didn’t seem to calm the dog. We were all straining our eyes to see what was out there: was that movement in between the tree trunks? I could hear no sound of footsteps… or paws. The air shivered as Morrigan allowed power to bloom between her palms, and Wynne muttered something about holding steady. 

“You may if you wish, old woman,” Morrigan replied tartly, “but I, for one, do not intend to be torn apart by a pack of savage beasts.”

I heard Alistair snort softly. “You’ve probably got bigger teeth than them, anyway.”

She made a disparaging growl, and, to my immediate left, Aegan spat on the ground and muttered a couple of Elvish words under his breath. I wished I knew what they meant. 

There had been no other sign of the white wolves. No more pale shimmers in the dappled trees. Maybe, I thought, Farriel had a point, and the fact we’d killed the others meant _these_ would hesitate to attack… but we were not in an easily defensible position. The bank left us vulnerable from above, and while the ground was more open in this part of the forest, and easier to fight on, there was also more room for any enemy to get up speed as they charged us. Not to mention, for all his trail craft and sure footsteps through the trees, I doubted that Revasir—or any of the Dalish—knew these woods as well as whatever beasts were stalking us. 

Something moved in the undergrowth. A shape seemed to dart between the tall, straight trunks… or was that just a trick of the light? I stiffened. The hackles had risen all along Maethor’s spine, his crinkled ears pressed flat to his head as he growled. 

Leliana lifted her bow, and we all tensed, waiting for whatever was lurking there to burst forth, like the white wolves had done the night before. 

Nothing happened. Farriel was whispering under his breath, just on the edge of hearing. It took me a moment to realise he was praying. 

The greasy crackle of magical energy washed over me as Morrigan allowed the spell she’d been holding in readiness to subside, a curse dangling on her lips, and Sten let out a long, uneasy breath, like the creak of a strained rope. 

A howl split the air then. It didn’t sound like Maethor’s: something sharper, like a feral cry. The mabari whined and growled, but did not loose another bay in reply. 

“Get ready,” Alistair warned, sword already half-drawn as we pulled tighter together, both Dalish and non-Dalish bunching close now, back-to-back as we scanned the trees. 

It was impossible to see where they came from. They burst out on us with the suddenness of summer rain: one moment, just that insufferable tension, and then the next, a torrent of the beasts, pouring from the trees. 

If I had never faced darkspawn—if I had not already believed in monsters—I wouldn’t have imagined they could be real. 

They were several of them. I couldn’t count: they moved too fast. Wolves… and yet not wolves. Their whole bodies were bent and attenuated, bowed and unnaturally proportioned, hunched at the shoulders like a dog trying to walk on two legs, but with terrible grace, speed, and power. 

I saw one loping straight towards me, bursting from the trees like a firecracker, its mouth a gaping red wound… and it straightened up as it ran, moving from four legs to two and then _leaping_ , flinging itself through the air with an ear-splitting roar. I braced my stance, my sword drawn—sod daggers, I thought: I wanted as much distance between me and these things as possible—ready to impale the bastard as it came down, but magic split the air above me, as Wynne let loose with a blast of something that seemed to turn the world to shimmering white. 

We broke formation quickly when one leapt from the top of the bank, landing almost directly on Sten’s shoulders. He roared, and shucked it off like it was nothing more than an irritation, the sheer weight of his momentum throwing the beast clear. I saw it flex and turn in the air, its hips rotating and distinctly canine legs paddling, and yet it righted itself, landing in a neat crouch on the fallen leaves, with what I could only think of as its arms spread wide to balance itself. 

I had never seen anything like it. Not even in books. In the stories of werebeasts that permeated Fereldan myth, they were more metaphor than physical description—the savage within the man, the untamed wild to which civilisation had to be brought—and there was never any hint about them of the horror I saw in these creatures. 

The beast in front of me was not a wolf. Not a wolf, and not a man, but a midpoint somewhere between the two… and it was not a happy compromise. It was a twisted, deformed thing, standing on two legs in a body that seemed not built for it. The knees faced backwards, like a dog’s, and the thighs and hips were curved the same, but bent and shaped wrongly. The spine had an odd slant to it, the shoulders hunched and jagged, set far lower than a man’s would have been, and the arms—or, I wasn’t sure, maybe front legs—were too long, too loosely coupled. The whole chest and ribcage jutted forwards from a long, hollowed-out stomach, leading the creature to that bent-over, top-heavy kind of movement, and yet giving it extraordinary depth of breath and muscle. A thick, long neck rose from its curved shoulders, and ended in a broad, elongated head: a heavy skull with rough-furred ears set further down than a dog’s would be—Maker, they were more like an elf’s, I thought with distaste—and something between a muzzle and a face. A wrinkled, snarling nose, shorter than a wolf’s, and malformed, yet packed with vicious, yellow teeth, seemed to sit oddly against its half-squared jaw. 

The creature’s entire body was covered with a ragged, matted coat, but there was no denying the muscles that rippled beneath… or the power in that distorted form.

The sounds of battle filled my ears—the thuds of flesh and weapons—and another of them barrelled past, just in time for me to kick out at its dog-like legs. My boot cracked against its knee and it spun, snapping and slavering as it started to fall… only to right itself and lunge at me. I pushed it back, propelling the flat of my blade straight across its chest. Its rank breath fell hotly on my face, and yet what frightened me most was its eyes. I suppose I’d expected to see darkspawn’s eyes, full of bloodlust and death. Instead, something terrifyingly familiar greeted me. There was anger, and fear, and everything that I felt in myself… and they were eyes that could have belonged to anyone I knew. 

I shoved hard, and as the beast broke away I brought my sword around, ready to strike and stab. One of Morrigan’s ice spells lanced the air, and I heard a werewolf yelp. A shout followed—one of the Dalish hunters—and I looked up towards the bank. Another of the beasts had broken away and scaled the bank, and at first I thought it meant to leap down on us like the other, but it clung to the slim trunk of a young tree that grew there, snarling down, its whole face split around a terrible, rippling growl. 

The other weres fell back around us, snapping and baring their teeth, but they weren’t lunging anymore. A tense, difficult sort of truce seemed to be in place but, as my companions and I stood ready, holding our positions, it was eerily clear that it was not we who had brokered it. 

The werewolf on the bank—their leader, it seemed, who glared down with such ferocity and yet held itself like a creature with intelligence—clawed one rangy arm through the air, like a demand for silence. 

And then it spoke.

It was a guttural, twisted sound, a voice born of a throat, jaw, and tongue not made for speech, and the words seemed torn from the air, tortuously sculpted and overlaid with violent snarls. 

“ _Enough!_ ”

I lurched in surprise, almost falling into the dead leaves. The creature raised its long shaggy arm again, its brindled coat—not unlike a longer version of Maethor’s, I thought, even as I noted the incongruity of the observation—matted with mud and blood. 

It pointed at Revasir, peeling its lips back into a snarling grimace. A low growl curled through the air and, with some difficulty, words fell again from the beast’s panting maw. 

“ _Hrrrr_ … Enough, Dalish. You… come from your clan to put us… in our place?” It spread its lips wider, baring its teeth and its red, shining gums, and a low growl slid from it, menacing and as heavy as tar. “Make us pay for the attack?” 

I stared. No one had imagined they would talk—that they would reason like this. Zathrian had said they were incapable of it, hadn’t he? I looked to Revasir, wanting to say that—wanting to say _something_ through the thrum of panic in my head—but he looked just as wild as the wolves. 

His hair hung riotously about his shoulders, his features contorted with rage and hate beneath his vallaslin, the ink like dark, whipping vines. He glanced at me with his lips pulled back in a sneer, his eyes wide voids of distrustful darkness. He frightened me then. Oh, the Dalish had unnerved me in so many ways since the beginning… but I’d never been truly afraid of him before. 

I tightened my hold on my weapon, digging my heels into the muddy leaf litter. “No one said they could talk,” I warned. “Let’s just—”

“They lie!” Revasir shouted, fury staining his face. “They are beasts! Nothing but savage things!”

The werewolf let out a roaring growl, and a couple of the others started to fidget, snapping their jaws impatiently. 

“We are beasts,” it snarled, “but we are no longer simple and mindless. Let that thought chill your spine, Dalish.”

The air almost crackled with tension. I glanced back at the rest of my group, worried by how ready the hunters were for this to end in a bloodbath. We might have outnumbered them, but I wasn’t at all sure we could take the beasts. Alistair caught my eye warily, his face tight and alert, and looked at Wynne. She shook her head almost imperceptibly, and I could see the same current run through all my companions: this was not going as it ought. 

I took a deep breath and pushed forwards, stepping close to the foot of the bank, craning my neck to look up at the beast… and placing myself in front of Revasir and the other hunters.

The creature glared down at me, its wrinkled snout twitching as it took in my scent. I could see saliva glisten on its teeth. 

“Please… I-I’m not Dalish. I… don’t understand.”

“ _Hrrr_ … another elf,” it grumbled, the word almost swallowed in the abrupt closing of its jaws. 

“But not Dalish,” I protested, my voice growing a little higher, and a little wobblier. “I’m a Grey Warden. My friends and I—”

“No!” 

It was part word, part bark, and it jolted me into silence. The werewolf lurched forwards, falling to a crouch on the edge of the bank as it leaned down towards us, its jaws slightly open. I could smell the rankness of its coat—they all had a strong musk about them, far worse than Maethor—and I fought the urge to lean back, though there were still several feet between us. 

The were dug its claws into the soft earth and leaned further down, its long neck stretched out in one strong, corded line. The powerful swells of its shoulders and back heaved as it huffed deeply and, all the while, it watched me with bright, intelligent eyes. 

“You… _hrrr_ … go back to Dalish masters, elf. Tell them you failed. _Hrrr_ … tell them Swiftrunner—” It slapped one clawed hand against its chest, and the thought that they named themselves, that they had words and names and _minds_ pounded in my head like a terrible drum. “—says we shall gladly watch them suffer the same curse we have suffered… for too long! _Hrrr…._ ” It lifted its head, snarling as it took in the hunters. “We will see you _pay_.”

I thought Revasir was going to throw himself at the bank and climb up to put the creature’s eyes out with his thumbs. Neither he nor Aegan seemed able to hold back much longer, though at least Daeon looked rooted with fear, which meant he probably wouldn’t do anything stupid. 

“Why?” I blurted, playing for time, playing for any way of keeping things from deteriorating further. “Why do you hate them so much?”

The beast’s shaggy head swung towards me, its eyes narrowed to gleaming slits. Its breath puffed in damp coils on the air, and a low growl leaked from between the bars of its teeth. 

“ _Hrrr_ … You do not know? Was it not Zathrian who sent you, _hrrr_?”

“Filth!” Revasir burst out. “How dare you even speak his name?”

He started to move, his stance threatening but—in a fraction of an instant—the werewolves were snarling and circling again, and I had put out my arm, barring him from the bank and the beast that called itself Swiftrunner. 

I looked at Revasir, and at my own arm and my leather-gloved hand, stretched out about six inches in front of his chest, like I had a right to command him. He looked at the limb too, and then at my face, and a complicated moment passed—one of those long stretches of time condensed somehow into a fleeting blink—during which I felt quite sure he would have liked to slap me across the face and send me back to the human gutter I’d come from. 

Perhaps, if that moment had stretched a little further, he would have relented. 

Instead, Alistair spoke up, his tone arch and his words unhelpful. “Er… shouldn’t we be rather more concerned about how they know his name? Your keeper told us we were chasing savage animals. No one said anything about them talking… or having plans. Or names, come to that….”

He was right. I didn’t want him to be right, or to voice the precise things I’d thought, but that made no difference. 

Revasir looked positively blind with anger as he turned, his cheeks flushed beneath his vallaslin, and I could feel what solidity our group might have had beginning to crack and bend beneath my feet. 

“Let’s all try and stay calm,” I said, stupidly, for there was no calm to be had. 

The creature snarled at me from the bank—a real, honest expression of the desire to bite and rend. Its ears were flattened to its head, its eyes less than slits in a face already monstrous and deformed by anger. I tried hard to resist the urge to draw my weapon, though I could hear the tensing of bodies behind me: to a one, we were ready to fight, and I felt sure it would come to it, whatever bloodshed I wanted to avert. 

“You know nothing, do you?” the beast growled, its words as gnarled and bent as tree roots. “ _Nothing_! Nothing of us… _hrrr_ … and even less of those you serve. _Hrrr_ _…_ you are a fool!” 

I bridled at that, almost ready to throw my anger in with Revasir’s… could this animal not see what I was trying to do? The werewolf straightened up then—less an act of standing, more an unfolding of its misshapen body—and threw its head back, letting a panting, snuffling growl slip through those wet, ragged jaws. Leaves shuffled underfoot, scuffed up as the other beasts jostled eagerly around us, penning us in… readying for the kill.

Swiftrunner jerked its head irritably, snapping those ugly jaws at me with dismissive violence. “ _Hrrr_ _…_ enough. We speak no more. Run from the forest while you can! Run back to Dalish masters… _hrrr_ _…_ tell them they are _doomed_.”

I could have sworn I felt the air break around us, like the crack of lightning and the roll of sudden thunder across a darkened summer sky, or the shatter of a clay jug on rough stones. Perhaps things would have gone differently if we hadn’t had the hunters with us. Perhaps, if I’d been stronger, braver, then I’d have managed to talk the beasts round… but then I’d been castigating myself for failing ever since Soris and I didn’t make it to Vaughan’s chambers in time to save Shianni, and maybe even long before that. 

All I knew was that no force in the world could have held Revasir and Aegan back then. The latter pulled out his belt-knife and roared, lunging at the nearest of the werebeasts, at exactly the same moment as everything turned to splinters, and _they_ leapt at us. I saw Swiftrunner jump from the bank in a horrible ballet of outstretched limbs and bared teeth—they were less like wolves than nightmarish creatures of the canopy, so nimbly they leapt, like foul birds in flight—and I fumbled for a weapon, yelling a warning that I didn’t need to voice. 

It was a messy, brutal fight. I knew the steps my companions made—used as we were to each other, or near enough—but the Dalish were new to our mix and, despite their expertise, they brought chaos along with skill. 

The creature called Swiftrunner had cleared me in its bound, aiming straight for Revasir as the group split outwards, and he anticipated it, deflecting the beast and swiping one of those cruel, curved Dalish blades at its knees. It dodged, feinted, and then Sten was between me and them, bringing one arm—still clad in the hodgepodge armour that didn’t fit him—down heavily across the snout of another werewolf before bringing his sword around in a wide arc that sent the beasts momentarily scattering. I heard Maethor yelp, then snarl, and saw a blur of movement as he darted after one of the white wolves, paws scrabbling to bring his solid, stocky body in line with its lithe form. I saw his jaws close on the ruff of its neck, heard the bays and growls of beasts that walked on four and two legs alike… and then had my own problems to face. 

A werewolf leapt at me, its lips pulled back in a horrific grin that exposed long, yellow teeth. I brought my sword arm up fast, swiping a hilt-first blow that cracked across its cheek and sent it pitching sideways, just enough for me to dive out of the way before it got up. The dull ache from the blow’s connection reverberated all the way up my arm, but I levelled my blade in preparation for a strike… a strike I didn’t want to make. The thing looked at me balefully as it scrambled back to its feet, snarling and lashing out with its clawed, twisted hands. They definitely were more hands than paws, I thought, as we circled each other in the maelstrom of slashing, scrapping bodies. How many of these creatures had been elves once? How many of them shems? Was there a difference anymore? 

The beast lunged, and I parried, the flat of my blade hitting its forearm, but barely pressing through the matted, stinking fur. It bore down on me with its full weight in retaliation, using the height it had over me, its hot breath rolling over my face as it strained to get closer, to bite and rend. I kicked it in the kneecap as hard as I could, and heard it squeal as it went down. And—compassion be damned—I’d have put my sword through its back if another of the bastards hadn’t cannoned into me from the side. I felt the sharp, dense pressure of jaws on my arm, and fear flooded me… but not the high, tight, intensifying fear of battle, where the blood pounds and the air tastes of sweat, because every tiny breath of a moment is the decider between life and death. This was genuine terror; terror at the thought of yellow teeth piercing my second-hand Dalish leathers, of this curse—this monstrous affliction—pouring into my tainted blood. 

I think I screamed… the sounds of anger and outrage, the way I’d screamed in the lower levels of Redcliffe Castle, when we fought walking corpses that still wore the vestiges of their guardsmen’s armour. I writhed, punched, elbowed, gouged, and got the thing off me. It was a huge, broad, powerful beast with shaggy, grey-flecked fur, and it would not stay down. It sprung at me, and I tried to duck to the side, but it caught me with one impossibly long, brawny arm—an arm that reached out like a human’s, catching and grabbing, but ended in a beast’s long, terrible claws—and struck me hard, sending me off-balance. Pain bloomed sharply across my left cheek, all fire and acid against the cold air. I staggered back, readying to swing my blade, but it came at me again too quickly. With a face full of fetid, rotten breath, I barely missed a swipe of its claws, and I pushed my blade out, trying to turn the creature from me… but it wasn’t like a human opponent, or even a darkspawn. Something that stands on two legs can usually have its weight used against it—as Mother had taught me, the finest gift a blade can give is the ability to deflect—but the werebeasts stood and balanced differently. Where I lunged and parried, they jumped and pounced, and it was all I could do to deal out a few small scratches. 

My companions didn’t seem to be doing any better. Magic lanced the air over and over—Wynne and Morrigan working in that strange concert of theirs, so oddly complementary—but the wolves seemed to know magic as well as mages did, for they dodged at every turn. Even Sten’s two-handed blows rarely struck home, though a squeal from one of the beasts told me Zevran had landed a hit. It knocked me off-centre at first, because I thought the noise came from Maethor and, in the moment I turned my head, another of the creatures cannoned into me, jaws spread and straining for my neck. 

I ducked my head, rammed into its chest and threw it back, bringing my blade up in a short swing, aiming for its gut, but it twisted neatly away, still snarling. I saw Revasir then, behind the beast, grappling with another of its kind. The wolf I had just thrown off began to turn, spinning on him like a dog who’s had his tail yanked, and I lunged forwards, driving my sword into its thigh. It screamed, and bore back down on me even as I tucked and threw myself to the ground, trying to avoid the pounce of teeth and claws. 

I hit the mud hard, knees first, and tried to strike at the first set of bipedal paws I saw before I came up again. I tasted sweat, metal, and blood—hard to tell whether it was mine or not—but Revasir had avoided being caught between the two beasts. I met his eye briefly as we danced past each other, ducking and parrying, and he seemed as feral a creature as the wolves, with his teeth bared and his knotted hair flying. I heard a growl close to my left—close enough to reverberate against my skin—and saw his blade skim the chest of one of the beasts, narrowly missing its throat as he pushed hard away. 

“Watch out!”

Something heavy hit me then, knocking the wind from me and sending me sprawling to the ground. In the confusion of legs and weaponry, I didn’t see what it was. I saw the dark, matted shape of a werewolf above me as I lay, starry-eyed, in the mud, and I thrust my blade up, catching it with a shallow blow to the stomach. There was a howling yelp, and I heard the one that called itself Swiftrunner growling out a word that seemed a misshapen snarl of agony and frustration. 

_Retreat_. 

I had barely scrambled to my feet again before I realised the werewolves were running. The commotion of scattering, fleeing feet and snarling, whining cries faded to a disorientating silence as they receded through the trees, with a couple of icy bursts of magic from Morrigan to light up their tails. 

We’d killed one. Daeon was near its corpse, a bloodstained knife in his hand, screaming obscenities at the retreating beasts—pure alienage gutter vowels, flecked with spittle and spite—and his face was a twisted mask of furious hatred. 

“… _fucking run, you flea-bitten nug-licking bastards_!” 

Panting, he spat on the ground, then wiped the back of his wrist across his forehead, apparently only just realising that he was bleeding from a gash to the temple. 

I bent over, hands on my knees as I tried to clear the fog from my vision and get the air back into my lungs. 

“Everyone alive?” I managed, as I straightened up. 

They looked it. Sten, Morrigan, and Wynne were all unscathed, and Maethor stood beside them, one ear inside out, his tongue lolling as he panted heavily. He looked surprisingly bright-eyed and pleased with himself, despite the bloody bitemarks on his neck and back, and took a few steps towards me, wagging his tail uncertainly. 

“Good boy,” I muttered, casting a glance around the rest of the group. 

Zevran was swearing a blue streak in Antivan under his breath as he rubbed at his weak arm, but he seemed unhurt, and Farriel hovered solicitously at his shoulder, looking just as disconcertingly chipper as the mabari. I noticed the gentle protectiveness with which he laid hold of Zev’s wrist, examining the tanned skin for injury… and I saw the way that Aegan regarded his clansman. 

The hunter scowled, and then turned that scowl on me, which I took to mean that he was all right. I looked around for Revasir, and saw him climbing stiffly to his feet near the base of the bank, limping but apparently not bleeding. I let out a small breath of relief, though the head count was not complete, and, very slowly, it dawned on me that what had cannoned into me, throwing me to the ground, was Alistair. His shield lay in the mud near the dead werewolf, but he wasn’t with it, and panic began to grip me. 

“Alistair?”

“Here,” he said, emerging from a few feet away, easing himself tentatively to his feet. “Are you all right? It didn’t—?”

His voice sounded thin and shaky. The sudden lurch of fear made me dizzy as I looked at him, and the awkward way he held himself, with his left hand clasped to his right side. 

I went to him at once, terrified of what I’d find. He’d obviously fallen hard: mud and leaf-litter streaked his hair, face, and armour, and he looked pale beneath the sheen of sweat. I couldn’t look him in the eyes—I didn’t want to—but I could smell the fear on him. Blood welled between his fingers, thick and richly red. It was at the place his worn splintmail armour joined. The boiled leather was torn, the metal ruptured, the strap broken… the same kit he’d had since Lothering, and which had seen so many repairs there probably wasn’t an original inch left of it. I couldn’t believe we hadn’t found him something better. Something safer. 

“Let me see,” I pleaded, reaching out to pull his hand from the wound. 

He resisted, even when I tugged harder at his wrist, and shook his head. 

“It’s not a bite,” he protested weakly. “Really, it’s—”

It didn’t matter. I was convinced he’d saved my life, pushed me aside with a willingness to take the curse for me, and words could not describe how terrible I felt. Worried hazel eyes met mine from within a muddy, battered face, and I found a blend of incomprehension, regret, and—worst of all—resentment in them that made my chest feel cold, and my throat turn dry. 

“But—”

“Merien.” 

I turned at the sound of Wynne’s voice, and the ominous hollowness with which she called my name. 

We were still one short, and I realised what had happened as the mage beckoned me to the other side of the bank. 

“Oh, Maker….” 

Leliana lay on the ground, propped up slightly on her elbows, her pale skin turned to deathly white. She raised her head and looked apologetically at me, her mouth twisted into a shallow, rueful little smile as she struggled for breath.

“I’m sorry. I… I think I was a little too slow, no?”

The wound was raw-edged and livid, puncture wounds between the torn stretches of skin clearly visible beneath the smears of blood. It stretched from her collarbone to the centre of her chest. Her armour had provided some protection, but not enough, and deep scratches marked her neck and arms.

She had been bitten, and bitten badly. 

I knelt beside her, not knowing what to do, what to say… I wanted to weep. For so long, the threat of death had been with us every day, and I hadn’t realised that such a constant thrum of it had so hard-inured me to fear that it had made me believe we were immortal. 

I looked at Wynne, full of blind hope and expectation. “You can do something, can’t you? We should… we should get some water, or—”

“I’ll be all right, I’m sure,” Leliana protested. “And we can’t be far from the creatures’ lair. We must press on, and—”

“You’re not going anywhere, my girl,” Wynne said, beginning to roll up her sleeves as I uncorked my water skin. 

Behind me, I was aware of Farriel and Aegan lingering, looking worried and fearful, like superstitious old men. Everyone was silent, which made the sound of Leliana’s laboured breathing seem louder. Even Zevran was tight-lipped, and Daeon looked terrified. 

“I-Is she going to die?” he asked, probably not as quietly as he thought he had. 

“Stupid,” Morrigan remarked, pushing past him to crouch beside Leliana. “This is sheer carelessness.”

“She hardly _meant_ to get bitten, you heartless cow,” Alistair exclaimed sourly. He was leaning against a tree, still holding his side. “If you can’t keep your mouth shut—”

“Oh, shut your own, idiot,” the witch snapped, cupping her hands together, fingers splayed out like the interlaced bars of a cage. “I have no patience for your prattling.”

Wynne put her hand on Leliana’s shoulder, her expression tightening. “Morrigan, if I may… such healing as can be done is probably better—”

Morrigan raised her head, her teeth bared and her eyes twin points of yellow-gold venom. “Shut _up,_ old woman, and let me concentrate. All of you. Quiet.”

She looked down at her hands, her eyelids drooping a little as power began to swell between her palms, and I felt it running through everything like one great, dark wave. Her lips twitched, her dark hair somewhat dishevelled, with strands escaping from its elegant binds, rustling against the pale skin of her cheeks just as the black feathers danced at her shoulders. 

“What’s she doing?” Leliana asked weakly, her hands pushing faintly at the earth. “That… that doesn’t look like a healing spell. I don’t want—”

“Shhh, child,” Wynne said, patting her shoulder soothingly. She glanced up at me, and motioned me to move to Leliana’s other side. 

I obeyed, placing a comforting—and restraining—hand on her arm as Morrigan began to sway her head gently from side to side. 

The Dalish were growing uneasy. I saw Daeon make a warding sign with his left hand—old alienage habits coming back, Creators or no Creators—and Revasir spat into the leaves, watching our little tableau with guarded, uncertain eyes. Farriel moved close to Zevran, standing behind him and threading an arm through his like a frightened child cowers in the folds of its mother’s skirts. Aegan alone turned away and stalked off a few paces, muttering under his breath. 

Morrigan separated her palms, revealing a curl of magical energy nestled in her palm: a glow that seemed to shimmer darkly, more a translucent flame that lived and burned than the white, hot light of Wynne’s healing magics. 

She reached out her other hand, reached without looking to where the corpse of the werewolf lay, the bloodstains still wet on the leaf litter. Morrigan flexed her fingers, a tiny frown pinching her brow, and I shuddered. It felt like a sudden crawling, slimy movement, as if the whole clearing itself was trying to turn inside out. 

Sten loosed a single word in abrupt Qunari, his face a picture of distaste, and turned his head, though he didn’t budge from his position. 

Leliana began to protest, and Wynne shushed her, first with words and then—before she had a chance to argue—a soft bloom of healing light, applied to her forehead. 

“Hold her,” she murmured. 

I did. I gripped Leliana’s shoulder and arm until my knuckles turned white. Maethor whined and licked his nose. Alistair was still leaning against the tree and applying pressure to his side, though I saw the movement of his head as he looked up. I was busy holding Leliana, and holding myself in check as Morrigan guided whatever dark energy she had harnessed towards us. 

She began to mutter under her breath—words that didn’t even seem to have shapes, just sequences of fluid sound—and even I could feel the power building. When she laid her hands on Leliana’s wound, the light seemed to intensify, everything tasted salty and bitter, and a whole violent wave of pressure washed up all around us. It knocked the air from me in one sharp cough, but it was over fast, and I was left light-headed as I stared down at the bloody, torn flesh, watching the ragged edges of skin appear to smoke faintly. 

Morrigan sat back on her haunches and brushed her hands together. 

“There. At least she shall have enough strength to fight it.”

Wynne glowered, those sharp blue eyes full of outrage and, I thought, maybe even fear. I was ready for her to savage Morrigan with a furious tirade, but she merely pursed her lips and, when she spoke, it was a low, modulated reproach. 

“One might question whether using the force of the curse itself to feed her healing is not going to do more harm than good. However,” she added, turning her attention sharply back to Leliana, “I suppose it _was_ a good use of entropic fields. We teach students to perform exercises in a very similar manner in the Circle.”

Morrigan narrowed her eyes, then rose and stalked off. 

I was confused, and it probably showed. 

“The life force of the dead,” Wynne said gently, stroking Leliana’s hair back from her face. “Instead of allowing it to dissipate naturally after the moment of death, the magic of entropy may harness such forces of decay and use them to provide… power. It is a complex principle.”

I grimaced, unable to avoid glancing at the dead werebeast. 

“So… _that_ is now—”

My lesson ended sharply, as Leliana let out a low groan, her body beginning to contort violently. Wynne gave quick, calm orders, and I followed, looking up to see Zevran kneeling on the bard’s feet, holding her ankles down. A very nervous Farriel accompanied him, pinning Leliana’s other arm when instructed. 

It was rough, ugly doctoring. Wynne healed Leliana as best she could—healed the wound, and the broken collarbone, and most of the damaged tissue around the bite itself—but it was clear to all of us that it wasn’t enough. 

She’d told me that the curse was like the taint, and that what the Dalish had suffered was much like the Joining. I couldn’t shake that thought, or the fear that accompanied it… the fear of what lay in store for my friend. 


	13. Chapter 13

 

It was hard to know whether Morrigan had helped or hindered. Hard for me to understand, anyway… especially as Leliana grew so ill in the hours that followed. We made a small camp close to the bank; at least enough to give her shelter while Wynne worked on the injuries, and I saw how the Dalish retreated from both the patient and healer alike—not to mention how they stared at Morrigan.

No one seemed to want to touch the corpse she’d taken her magic from, until at last Sten hefted the dead werewolf over his shoulder and, muttering under his breath, carted it off into the undergrowth.

I was helping Wynne. Zevran stayed, and so did Farriel, alone among his clansmen in his preparedness to be so near Leliana. It was awful. She bucked, arched, yelled, vomited… and we helped her through it. I remembered the night of my Joining, and the old temple at Ostagar where the stones were etched with strange symbols, and I’d lain unconscious on them with no idea what passed between the world turning black and my waking again. Daveth had died horribly, wracked and arched with pain, and I sometimes wondered whether I’d thrashed around before I woke, fighting the foulness pouring through my blood like he had—like Leliana was doing now—or whether it had all been quiet and terrible, the way she turned after the worst of it was over.

We drew blankets around her, in defence against the bitter cold that the nights brought with them now, and I wiped her face with a damp cloth while Farriel cleaned up and Zevran sealed the little bender tent he’d fashioned around us, tucking in all the edges of the oiled leather that hung from pegged down tree branches, and making sure the ground was soft. It was a cocoon that smelled of hide, grease, and fear and, all the while, the searing, steady light of Wynne’s magic burned, her face a carved mask in bone—all stern lines and strong, flat planes—and the smell of it washed up around us, like copper and warm bread.

I’d grown used to that smell, and maybe even started to find it comforting. After a skirmish or a long day’s travel, Wynne’s healing magic could be like a mother’s balm calmly applied to a squirming child.

It wasn’t like that now.

Leliana didn’t seem to move or speak much, and it was difficult to know how aware she was of anything. If the curse was even remotely like the taint, Maker alone knew what she would have to go through in the night to come… or maybe longer. After all, none of us had any idea how long it could take. We’d found Deygan alive almost a week after the hunters had entered the forest, but neither Wynne nor any of the Dalish could guess how long he’d lain there, and whether the curse was still burning in his blood, or whether it had faded to some kind of dormancy, and allowed the more prosaic problems of physical infection and decay to set in.

Either way, things looked bleak for Leliana, even after we got her through the worst of it, and induced sleep finally claimed her.

Zev and Farriel had gone by then, dismissed by a weary looking Wynne. They both seemed glad to be out of it, and I couldn’t blame them. The others had been busy pitching the tents around our small, rather paltry fire, and scrabbling together what comforts could be had from our rations. We’d already boiled some of the drinking water to clean Leliana’s wounds and, by the fire, I could hear Aegan and Revasir discussing the possibility of venturing back a little along the way we’d come to find a clean water source, and maybe fresh meat. The consensus seemed to be that it was too dangerous, and probably not worth it.

I knelt by Leliana’s head still, smoothing back her hair as Wynne laid the last caresses of the sleep spell around her. Bloody pads and bandages swathed her chest, but her porcelain skin had grown dull and translucent, each shallow breath shuddering within her.

‘Healing by degrees’, Wynne had called it. What you did when magic alone couldn’t cure an injury, or when the healer had arrived too late. That was when I first learned that magic couldn’t heal everything flawlessly… and the point at which I realised how lucky I’d been. The small scars I still bore—the little whitish puckers and faintly shiny marks where darkspawn arrows had once blossomed from me like a tree full of foul blooms—were the results of powerful magic (and I was aware that I probably didn’t want to know exactly how Flemeth had revived me). Wounds I’d had since, and the injuries in the Circle Tower… all of these things had been healed so quickly, so cleanly.

I’d been so busy wrapping my head around the idea of magic as something to be thankful for, instead of fearful and suspicious of, that I hadn’t paused to truly appreciate the magnitude of Wynne’s skill. It frightened me to realise, all of a sudden, that her abilities were not infinite, and that sometimes magic could only alleviate the worst of an injury, and not spirit it away as if it had never happened.

The mage was exhausted, in any case. Alistair had refused to let her expend any more energy on healing him, and now he was sitting by one of the tents, perched on his pack, his armour still on and his whole posture that of a man trying to adjust himself around a painful wound.

“Prideful boy,” Wynne muttered, probably to herself, as she glanced at him through the shelter’s draped opening. “That injury is going to need dealing with, whether he likes it or not.”

“I could take a look,” I offered—Maker alone knew why; my mother’s big mouth showing itself, Father would have said—and, after a small pause, Wynne nodded gratefully, gesturing with a tired wave of her hand to the pots of ointments and small vials of liquid that sat in a leather bag beside the now-slumbering Leliana.

“Thank you, dear. There are some clean rags in the pot. Help him clean it up, and I’ll… well, I… I think I’ll just sit for a moment….”

I gathered the things together and, with a deep breath, tried to put on the best no-nonsense demeanour I could as I went to play healer.

Alistair looked up at my approach, his expression dull and tired.

“How is she?”

“Sleeping,” I said, struggling to hold his gaze. “Wynne’s done as much as she can for now. She wants me to take a look at your side.”

“It’s all right,” he protested, wincing a little as he drew breath, presumably to ask something else about Leliana.

I didn’t want to hear it. I was fighting hard enough to drown the screams of blame in my head, now the dulling shock of what had happened was beginning to wear away. 

“Let me help,” I said, kneeling before him in the leaf litter.

He didn’t move. He seemed so stiff and cold with me, and I took that to mean he blamed me—oh, everyone blamed me, I was sure—but I was too full of the needles of anxious, tired guilt and worry to react. I just sighed, and set the bag, the rags, and the water canteen down by my side, my hands falling uselessly into my lap.

“Alistair….”

The echoes of the battle beat in my head: the blow I was sure he’d taken for me, that I hadn’t even seen coming, and the moment Leliana had fallen that I hadn’t even seen at all. So much blood, chaos, and craziness… and the werewolves, with their voices and their strange words.

_No one had said they could talk. They were supposed to be nothing but savage beasts. Animals. Demons._

Zathrian had misled me but, worse than that, I’d known he wasn’t telling me everything. I’d known since I’d spoken with Athras that the keeper’s own clan suspected him of hiding the truth, and—no matter how hard I tried—it was becoming increasingly impossible to believe that he’d done it purely to protect them.

Oh, I was no stranger to being manipulated. My whole life had been defined by the alienage—our rules and customs and the stupid things we told our young, which I had both begun to resent, and yet so desperately missed believing in—but I was only just beginning to wake from that dream. I had barely begun to open my eyes to the sheer breadth of things I didn’t understand, and the knowledge left me stunted, crippled: incapable of anything more.

Awkward silence had pooled between us, and at first Alistair did nothing to break it. He just looked down at me, his expression oddly detached. 

His face was still streaked with dirt. Bathing at the Dalish camp seemed a distant memory, but then you always feel worse when you start to get dirty after being clean. When it’s new dirt on top of old, it doesn’t matter so much. We all stank, anyway, and the rime of old sweat felt caked under my arms.

I cleared my throat awkwardly, and made a vague gesture at his armour. “Well… let’s take a look, then.”

Alistair lowered his voice, shifting uncomfortably on his pack as he leaned forwards. “I can’t reach the straps,” he admitted. “And I can’t…. I think I might have cracked a rib.”

“Ah. All right. Hold still.”

He looked embarrassed as I shuffled on my knees through the leaves, and we began the painfully awkward ballet of trying to help him out of his breastplate and jack.

I was too tired, too preoccupied to think before I acted, only realising once I had my hands full of leather and splintmail how close the action brought us… and how truly uncomfortable it was for us both. My aching, sore fingers stumbled on strappings and fixings, my lack of familiarity with Alistair’s armour making the task go slowly. He winced at every pull, every tug, and still tried to hide it, and I am sure we both felt as exposed as each other, despite the fact that the others barely looked our way once—with the notable exception of Daeon, who I could feel staring at me from across the camp.

Finally, with Alistair stripped to his undershirt, I could see the bloody hole in the fabric, and I carefully lifted the hem, exposing the wound. He sat still, moving only to lift the garment further, taking the hem from my fingers and holding it out of the way to grant me access. He seemed to be trying not to breathe, and I tried not to think about how little we had spoken to each other, and how very strong the smell of his blood was.

It was a nasty gash, about three inches long, a half-inch wide, and deep with it, and he was probably right about the rib. A thick pad of reddened, swollen flesh marked the place that would bloom to bruising in a day or so, and he sucked air sharply through his teeth when I touched it.

We didn’t speak as I began to cleanse the wound, carefully washing dirt and pulling loose threads from it. He looked the other way, and I held my breath for as long as I dared, divorcing myself from the actions as if I could pretend that my hands didn’t belong to me, and that I didn’t feel so small as I did when I saw the coldness in his face.

Eventually, I had to breathe, and I had to admit that I could smell his sweat, his blood, and his skin, and that I could feel his warmth even through my chilled, dissociated fingers. It made the gulf between us so much more palpable and, when I exhaled again, the breath left me in a rush, turning to coils of white on the cold air.

Alistair glanced down at me, his mouth taut, and I looked up as he did so, the question dragged from me on a reluctant tongue.

“Are you angry with me?” I asked softly, opening the jar of wound ointment we’d used on Leliana. The sharp, bitter smell of it wafted up between us. “If I hadn’t pushed so hard to come here—”

“No.” Alistair frowned as he looked down at my hands. “No. That’s not— I mean… all right, things haven’t exactly gone to plan, I’ll give you that.”

The balm slicked my fingers with its thick, greenish greasiness. I hated the way it got worked into the sides of my fingernails, ingraining itself into my skin. I had no idea what was in it—the stuff was far nastier than the ointment Morrigan had once given me for blisters—and I supposed I probably didn’t want to know.

Alistair sighed tightly. “I… I do think you’ve been a fool, though.”

“Oh.”

I just knelt there for a moment, not sure what to say. I expected to find heat flaming in my cheeks—the burn of humiliation and embarrassment roasting me upon its coals—but there was nothing. Everything felt a little bit more like nothingness, and I kept my gaze focused on my hands, so I didn’t have to see anything else.

Above us, the bare tree branches rattled, and the breeze whispered through the clothed boughs of firs and spruce.

“You’ve been blinded by it,” Alistair said slowly, his words quiet and punctuated by small silences that might have been uncertainty, or unwillingness, or just the complaints of his injury making themselves known. “I mean, _yes_ , you had a point in pushing us… the Dalish were here to be found and, if the clans can be brought together, that’s an army in itself, but…. Well, it’s a big ‘if’, isn’t it?”

He was still holding his shirt up, baring his side to the night air. The edges of the glob of ointment had begun to melt on my skin, which seemed odd, because my hands felt so cold. I blinked at the greasy scoop of balm, and I addressed it rather than him when I spoke, because somehow that was easier.

“So, you think it would have been better if we’d cut our losses and gone after a cure for the arl instead?” My voice was quiet and even, but I could hear the ice in it; coldness I didn’t want to be there, goading for an argument I didn’t know why I wanted to have. “Some people might say trying to track down an ancient relic that probably doesn’t even exist, in order to save a man who might already be dead, is a pretty big ‘if’, too.”

There was a small pause; a shallow silence between us that felt like a yawning gulf.

“It’s not the same,” Alistair said tightly.

My lip curled. “No. Of course it isn’t.”

“Well?” he demanded, his voice positively twanging with restrained anger. “Look at what happened today. You _know_ Zathrian didn’t tell you the truth. Those weren’t mindless beasts. I _told_ you that—”

I rocked back on my heels, jutting my chin out as I glared up at him. “Oh? Really? _Wonderful_. That helps, Alistair. Thank you.”

He exhaled heavily, and with a rather theatrical expression of annoyance.

“You know what I mean. You’ve been too eager to put your trust in the Dalish, when you’re not like them. _They’re_ not like _you_. Just because they’re elves—”

He was making a valid, sensible point. That much was true. And it was true he _had_ been suspicious of Zathrian’s handling of us, but he’d held off arguing with me… and now I wished he hadn’t. Now, I managed to blame him for that, and for everything, and for having the Void-taken insensitivity to remind me of my own idiocy. I scowled, and managed to read a lifetime of alienage gutters and shemlen prejudices into what he was trying to say. 

“ _‘Just because they’re elves’_? You don’t know what that is! And you know what? The Dalish are _here_. They’re alive. Even if Zathrian was holding back, at least the clan’s real. Not like running after a fairytale.”

“That’s not the point!” Alistair snapped, proper anger finally clouding his face as he glowered down at me.

I almost welcomed it, and I almost wanted to push him further, just to see how far he’d go. “Oh? Isn’t it?”

“No!” He grimaced, as if my ignorance was more physically painful than the wound in his side. “Maker’s _teeth_ …. Are you really so caught up here that you can’t even see that?”

“Only as caught up as you are with the arl,” I countered bitterly. “Whatever you think you owe to him—”

“It’s not about that!”

“Yes, it is!” I protested, my own bottled-up frustration finally bursting out in a way that, if I could have looked at the two of us, posed in that absurd tableau—him with his shirt held up and me with green goo all over my hand—I would have found comical. “You’ve said as much yourself, Alistair, whether you think so or not. But he abandoned you. He gave you up… doesn’t that mean anything? He’s no more family to you than your half-sister!”

It was a stupid, hurtful thing to say. At some level I knew that, but I didn’t seem to care.

Alistair’s expression hardened, his brows drawn low and his eyes clouded. “It doesn’t make any difference… just because something isn’t easy doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do. I thought you believed that.”

There was an undercurrent of such hopelessness in his voice; a mournful kind of tone that I barely registered while I was so intent on hurting him.

“That’s what I’m trying to do _here_! Or isn’t all this worth as much as one nobleman? Is your idea of ‘the right thing’ different for elves and shems?”

Suddenly, our little argument—my bantam strutting, drawing lines in the sand and ruffling my feathers as I paraded along them—sounded hollow, and I could see my own contorted reflection echoed back in his eyes. 

Alistair’s frown grew sullen, his gaze sliding away from me.

“You’re not usually so stupid,” he muttered—something he’d never, ever called me before. “But you are bloody stubborn. And I still wish you’d just _look_ at what you’re getting into.”

“You think I didn’t? I never _ordered_ anybody into this! You put me in charge, but I’ve never—”

“You’d have come into the forest on your own, though, wouldn’t you?” he demanded, glaring at me with renewed ire, the shadows sharpening his face. “When Zathrian asked, you’d have jumped at the chance. You couldn’t see a bloody thing except your precious sodding Dalish, and maybe, just _maybe_ —if you’d listened—”

“—Leliana wouldn’t have been bitten?” I supplemented. “No. I _know_ that! Do you think I don’t know that?”

We both shut up then, sharp words and hot tempers cracking into abrupt silence as we glared at each other. I could see so much disappointment in his face; maybe I’d put it there myself, or maybe I just pulled it from the shadows and imagined it. Either way, it hurt, and what hurt even more was that, in that silence, Alistair didn’t rush to comfort me. There was no ‘I didn’t say that’ or ‘That’s not what I meant’… just a wordless admission of my guilt.

Across the clearing, Zevran coughed loudly and tried to strike up a conversation with Sten about the qunari antaam. I was grateful to him, though it heightened my awareness of just how little privacy there was.

I lowered my gaze—I didn’t want to be the first to break eye contact, but I couldn’t stand the look on Alistair’s face anymore—and stared blankly ahead of me. His wound was bleeding again, just lightly, and his skin had sprouted goosebumps.

“You’re cold,” I said flatly.

He set his jaw. “I expect I’ll survive it. Look, give me the—”

“No.”

I gritted my teeth, and began to smear the ointment on my fingers carefully around the wound. Alistair tensed at my touch, but kept looking straight ahead. It was probably one of the most awkward things I’d ever done in my life, and yet I’d rather have died than give up that little pot of greasy balm.

I tried to concentrate on what I was doing, smearing the preparation into that ugly tear across his flesh, hating the fact it made him flinch and yet—in a way that made me feel more than a little ashamed—relishing the fact I could cause him discomfort. My fingers skated carefully over the bloody gash itself, and the bruised flesh, and I could feel his ribs, and the solid curves of his torso, and no matter how much he’d irritated or scalded me, I couldn’t escape the fact I was touching him. This man—this human—who had taken so many of the prejudices, confusions, and reservations I had, and single-handedly crumpled them like paper… he had an effect on me unlike anything I’d ever known before, and it scared me.

Across the camp, the others had managed to make enough conversation to distract themselves. The fire burned, pushing back the shadows—for a little while, at least—and Wynne had emerged, looking very slightly less tired.

“Look, Meri…,” Alistair began, as she started to come towards us.

I didn’t respond. Instead, I straightened up, climbing stiffly to my feet and wiping my hands on the seat of my leathers as I nodded to Wynne.

“I wasn’t sure if you wanted to stitch it or not,” I said, inclining my head in Alistair’s general direction, as if he was nothing more than the wound; nothing more than an ‘it’.

She looked rather unimpressed, though in the blue-grained dimness of the night, it was hard to really see the difference between fatigue and disapproval. I ducked out of the whole thing, and left Wynne to deal with the difficult business of the healing alone. She could talk Alistair down this time, I decided, not me.

Just for once, not me.

Instead, I wandered over to the fire, hoping for some brief relaxation and a chance to calm my aching muscles. Any thought of that was quickly expunged by the reception I got from the others. I could feel it in their gazes, taste it on their breath… and the look that Revasir gave me was withering.

That night, I occupied the unenviable position between scapegoat and traitor. To my companions—my friends, who should have been able to trust me—I was responsible for what had happened. To the Dalish, I had made myself suspect by so loudly arguing about Zathrian, and with the human I called comrade. It was Daeon who put the tin lid on it, by muttering as I passed him:

“Huh. Never thought I’d see _you_ on your knees in front of a shem, Tabris.”

I turned smartly on my heel to glare at him, lip pulled back and—though I’d not even known I was doing it—my right hand almost on the hilt of my dagger. His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t flinch away or bluster about it, the way fights got picked in the alienage. He just stood his ground, a callous smirk on his face, and Dalish tooling on his leathers.

I wanted to be away from them. All of them. Wordlessly, I turned from him and crossed to the edge of the camp, where I found a piece of dry log to sit on, and—with the very edges of the firelight playing against my back, and dropping in rags around my feet—I settled in for a bloody good sulk.

Ahead of me, the forest dissolved into darkness. There was no real way of making out individual trees or pathways through the shadows and the fuzzed, blue-black boundlessnesses of the night. It all seemed as amorphous as the mess my days had slid into—no calendar, no regular routine of market days, Chantry services, washing, cleaning, and working—and I wished there was a clear way ahead.

I remembered the Imperial Highway, with its great white stones and cracked archways, like broken ribs over the paved roadway, and how numbingly dull the hours of that repetition had been. I missed them. I missed the certainty there had been, too, though _then_ it hadn’t felt like that… and yet had I been such a different person?

I frowned, my breath misting on the air as I recalled the bandits we’d run into. What had it been… just a handful of days since we’d left the Wilds? Not long after we’d looted the abandoned Chasind huts, which had felt too much like thieving for comfort, and Alistair had voiced his first suspicions about Morrigan being a shapeshifter. (He’d been right about that, too, Maker damn him. I’d already known he wasn’t half as stupid as he liked to pretend, but still… why had I not been listening to him more?)

I remembered putting my dagger to the neck of their leader—how short he was for a shem, that I barely had to reach high—and how the bitter battle-call of it had beat in my blood. No vacillation then. No self-pity. So why was it so hard to be that clear-headed now? Was it the responsibility that had been piling on me since, and the ever-increasing number of people who looked to me for answers? Or was I still not over the things I’d seen in Denerim? The ache of loss was still there, though I had believed I’d accepted it—and maybe I had, until I met Daeon again. Maybe it was _his_ fault, I told myself, because I so badly wanted to believe that I wasn’t falling apart.

A soft rustle among the leaves made me look up, straining my useless night-vision for a glimpse of _something_ in the darkness.

As if she had been waiting for the opportunity to do it with the best dramatic effect, Morrigan melted out of the shadows, slinking between the trees in a slack-boned manner that made me wonder if she was still adjusting to being human again. Her skin seemed almost luminously pale; just narrow slips of it between the folds of heavy cloth, feathers, and leather. She had a dark cloak wrapped loosely around her, with the hood up, and it lent a disturbing shadowy quality to her face. The make-up she wore was, unusually for her, close to rubbing away, leaving uneven swoops of shadow on her skin, and I almost smiled to think of the times I’d wondered whether she glamoured it on with magic.

“We will have to make haste at first light,” she said, coming to sit beside me unceremoniously, both uninvited and apparently uncaring. “Move quickly to the werebeasts’ lair, and bring this to an end.”

I scoffed, turning my head to watch her stare at the same patch of shadows I’d been glaring at.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Huh.” Morrigan’s lips twitched impatiently, but she continued to watch the darkness, as if there was something mildly interesting there, just for her. “We are close. You think they would have attacked if we were not? Anyway, ’tis not _us_ they want. We will merely be bait, or messengers.”

I frowned, my thrumming mind gradually feeding me small realisations. “Zathrian?”

“Mmm.” Her dark-smudged mouth moved into something almost like a lazy little smile, as if she considered this a potentially intriguing opportunity. “Indeed. Now, _there’s_ a clever fellow.”

“Not the first word I’d choose,” I muttered. “Why would he lie like he did? It doesn’t make sense.”

Morrigan took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly, like she was savouring the aroma of damp earth, pine needles, and decay. For all I knew, it smelled like home to her, though I recalled the flora of the Wilds being somewhat different to the forest.

“Doesn’t it? Perhaps you should ask your Dalish friends. They hold their keeper in _very_ high regard, don’t they? I’m sure they will be only too happy to explain,” she added as she rose to her feet, her voice taking on precisely the same light, spiteful tone she used to taunt Alistair.

“They don’t trust _you_ ,” I said, rather uselessly, because who of us really did?

When Rhyn had put me on the spot, I’d managed to say no better of this woman—to whom I owed my life—than that, if she’d wanted us dead, we would have been already. It was hardly a vote of moral confidence.

It had grown late. Tired, sore, and sick of the forest, I rubbed my forehead and pushed my hand back through my greasy, lank hair, scratching at the itchy scalp beneath.

“You know what they’re worried about, don’t you?”

Morrigan lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted, disinterested shrug, indicating that she neither knew nor cared.

“You can take the form of a wolf. They think _you_ brought the wolves to us.”

She crossed her arms, her darkened lips curling into a bitter sneer. “And why should I do that?”

“I don’t know. To follow them back? See where they go?”

Her lips parted further, and a small laugh dripped between them, choked out as if she couldn’t be bothered with giving vent to it in full.

“Idiocy. Stupidity, and superstition.”

“Really? After what you did with that corpse?” I asked, in a moment of foolhardy bravado. “Because that looked a lot like blood magic.”

The sneer hardened into a snarl on Morrigan’s face, a pale knife in the gloom, and her ochre-gold gaze speared mine.

“Then you have never seen blood magic,” she snapped. “If you _had_ , you should not mistake it so easily. It is a terrible power—immense, and hungry, and insatiable—and it can never be truly controlled.”

“You gave Leliana strength from something dead,” I said dully. “That’s….”

“Blood magic is nothing to do with life or death,” Morrigan retorted. “Blood is life, yes; it is energy, and power, but it is not the _source_ of that magic. A mage who has embraced blood magic—made the bargains that must be struck to seal such pacts—has looked into the eyes of a demon, and promised it all it desires. Do you think me such an eager thrall?”

I shook my head. “No… I don’t see you making deals with anyone.”

She snorted softly; I wasn’t sure whether it was amusement or offence.

“Well, then,” Morrigan said, rather more gently now, the scorn dropping slightly from her voice. “Perhaps you should go and tell those Dalish you have quelled the witch, and let them cease their gawking at me. It is most tiresome.”

I smiled at that, but she just waved a hand testily.

“Go on. You have moped enough, and we have precious little time to waste.”

She had a point… not that I was going to admit it. I wrinkled my nose.

“Sure. In a little while.”

Morrigan shrugged, and slunk away, leaving me alone with my thoughts. 


	14. Chapter 14

I sat apart from the others for most of the night, pretending to myself that we needed someone to keep watch, and I needed space and quiet to think. It wasn’t true; like Morrigan had said, I was moping. And sulking. I even managed to take an absurd kind of martyr’s pride in the fact that, when I bundled myself up in my cloak and sat with my back against a tree trunk, its bark dug into my shoulders, and the night dew dripped down my neck.

After a while—after the others had mostly settled, and the fire had died down to a low burn against the cold—I was almost numb, and my discomfort grew great enough to see me slope back in search of warmth.

They were all asleep, save for Sten. He sat on the far edge of the circle of firelight, his great bronze face painted with shadows and his eyes turned to dark, bruised embers by the flames. I picked my way between the slumbering bodies: the Dalish, thrown together like pups, except for Farriel, who was tucked comfortably into Zev’s arms; Wynne, snoozing gently by the bender tent in which Leliana lay; and Alistair, propped on his side under two blankets, head resting on one arm and the other hand rubbing his nose as he mumbled in his sleep. Maethor had bedded down as close to the fire as he could get, and he alone looked up at my arrival, wagging his stumpy tail sleepily.

“Warden,” Sten observed quietly.

I blinked. Sometimes, it was ridiculously easy to be surprised by Sten breaking a silence.

“Sten.”

Out of politeness—or maybe a desire for company that I didn’t really want to admit to—I went to hunker down near him, holding my hands out to the fire’s warmth. My fingers were bluish-white beneath the freckles, and the joints and knuckles had turned a raw, vibrant orange-red. I hadn’t realised I was shaking so much.

“S’cold, isn’t it?” I said, smiling at him before I remembered that was essentially a pointless gesture. Sten wasn’t usually much of a one for the niceties of small talk… although, just as I was thinking that, he surprised me.

“It will get colder,” he said bluntly, then, before I could say anything about not looking forward to fighting darkspawn in the snow: “But for the cold, much of this place reminds me of my homeland.”

He lifted his head, glancing at the bare branches and fronded boughs of the trees, everything made into a tapestry of darkness where our firelight couldn’t reach. The forest seemed deathly, chokingly still, as if the shadows were a weighted shroud that swaddled the land. I shivered, and wished we had more firewood.

“S-Seheron has jungles, doesn’t it?” I asked, relying on the knowledge of the world I had from Brother Genitivi’s hyperbolic book, and the brief mentions Sten had made before of the smells of tea and incense. I confess, I had a rather romanticised notion of an exotic port city filled with bazaars, where the qunari lived civilised, ordered lives in huge, square houses with enormous, square doors. 

“Yes.” Sten wasn’t looking at me, rather he was gazing into the night, and I recognised at once the look of a man staring into his memories. “There are jungles, and forests. And monsters. The only difference is that our fiends wear the faces of men.”

“Huh.” I nodded slowly. “Well, that’s cryptic. Fiends who wear the faces of men? You mean like… blood mages?”

It was the first example I could think of, not a good one. He grunted, those vibrant eyes narrowing as he glared into the shadows.

“No. We do not permit a _saarebas_ that corruption. It is why we monitor them so carefully, from the moment they are discovered. There is no blood magic in Seheron.”

The statement sounded oddly like something drummed in by an elder or a teacher, and I bit my lip, restraining the questions I wanted to ask. Perhaps I had spent too much time with Morrigan and Wynne, but… surely, if qunari mages were so heavily controlled—collared and blinkered, to call it what it was, with their tongues torn out and their bodies shackled—then they were not permitted to learn magic as the Circle taught it. If _that_ was the case, then they could neither turn to blood magic nor turn away from it; they were raw, unchannelled weapons, untrained vessels that could barely contain their own power. No wonder the qunari thought them unpredictable and dangerous… just like I’d once considered all magic.

I didn’t want to open up that particular debate, so I just rubbed my hands together and nodded politely.

“I see. So, they’re… what? Criminals? Everywhere has criminals, I suppose. Are they ‘fiends’?”

Sten snorted, and turned to look at me. Beyond the fire, the somnolent shuffle of sleepy bodies was the only sound in the darkness. His eyes glimmered, unnervingly bright shreds of colour caught in the firelight, and turned to hard, cutting jewels.

“Darkspawn, abominations, plagues, and storms: men are far more dangerous than these. One moment of betrayal can bring more ruin than an earthquake. You know this.”

_Loghain_. My chest tightened a little at the involuntary remembrance of Ishal, and the never-ending tide of darkspawn. The boy I’d seen die in front of me… the men on the broken bridge with their legs torn off. Alistair, pushing me behind him as the ’spawn flooded the top of the tower.

At the time, I’d been so focused on not dying that I didn’t even comprehend Loghain’s act of betrayal. I still didn’t, though the full ramifications of what he’d done had begun to unfold before me. Whatever his motives—whatever he’d meant to save, or gain, by what he did—the whole country was paying the price. And the Blight wouldn’t stop at Ferelden’s borders.

I nodded grudgingly. “Yes. You’re right. So… what betrayals did these fiends of yours commit?”

“They are Tal-Vashoth,” Sten said, spitting the word out like it tasted foul.

I looked at him in surprise as he turned his face back to the shadows. I’d rarely seen him so overtly emotional about anything, but this wasn’t just anger: he seemed genuinely appalled, as if he’d been forced to name some taboo bogeyman that was both forbidden and vile.

“What does… that mean?” I asked, shying from trying to repeat the word.

His lip curled back, underscoring his distaste. “They say there are ‘the grey ones’. True, in the knowledge of themselves. It is false. They are gaping holes where men used to be. Nothing can fill them.”

That sounded ominous, and yet—given the rather hyperbolic distrust Sten’s people seemed to reserve not just for mages, but almost anything outside the remit of the Qun—I was a little wary of agreeing without question. 

“What’s so terrible about them?”

He turned his face to the side, the thin strips of flamelight picking at his broad nose and cheeks, and the pinched, slanting point to his ear; highlighting everything about him that was so far from human, and so far from elven.

“There was a village in the mountains of Seheron. Farmers,” he added, sounding strangely reflective. “They grew cinnamon and nutmeg trees in perfectly ordered rows. There would always be one person waiting. A foreman, a harvester… rank didn’t matter.”

Sten’s pale brows drew together, and I found myself frowning in sympathy, for his look was so clearly that of a man caught in the vice of the past. His voice remained a muted rumble, so as not to wake the sleepers nearby, but a new layer of mournful quiet seemed to shroud the words, even as I struggled to make out the meaning of the story.

_Someone waiting? Waiting for what?_

Enigmatic pronouncements were not entirely uncommon where Sten was concerned, but usually his stories—like the one about the ashkaari and the drought-struck village—made as much sense as any parable ever did.

I wet my lip tentatively. “Um… who…?”

He shook his head slightly: a small, single movement, as if he didn’t wish to believe his own recollection. “Often, they would say nothing. Simply watch as we worked to examine the empty house—a new one each time—that had once been the home of a colleague, a friend.”

The fire crackled softly. One of the Dalish—hard to tell which, from where I was sitting—moved in his sleep, and Maethor lifted his head, ears pricking briefly before he lowered his chin again and gave a soft, doggy groan.

“We always made a point of searching,” Sten said, and I had never thought that someone so implacably physical, so _strong_ as him could ever exude such a sense of vulnerability. “Now and then, a body would turn up in a river, eaten by rain and crows. More often, we found nothing. Even in the worst parts of the jungle, the villagers would send someone with us, to see the tiniest piece of bone or cloth. Anything contained the possibility of their lost friend.”

I was confused; I couldn’t tell whether he meant the Tal-Vashoth killed these people, or whether they spirited them away to become a part of their ranks… these ‘grey ones’. _True knowledge. Hmm…._ The thought was at least a little bit amusing to me: wasn’t that also what Grey Wardens said of themselves?

I gathered, however, that asking for clarification probably wasn’t going to get me far, so I tried a different tack.

“Why do the T— why do they fight you?”

Sten snorted, and didn’t turn to look at me. “Isn’t it the nature of a wound to bleed?”

I winced. Bloody wounds were rather too close to home—too livid in very recent memory—for comfort. He seemed to realise that, maybe even to share the sentiment, I thought, for his face became very still and, after a moment, he shook his head again. 

“I have no more answers than you, Warden.”

“They must give reasons,” I said, perhaps a little optimistically. “Don’t they give reasons for fighting?”

In my innocence, I thought that was how all wars started.

“Huh. Now and then,” Sten said, sounding as dubious as I’d ever heard him. He curled his lip dismissively, as if curtailing his own admission. “Do the reasons matter? It makes little difference to those they fight.”

“Is that all of the qunari, then?” I asked. Although I knew my questions probably irritated him beyond measure, I couldn’t help it; Sten’s otherness made me so curious sometimes that I forgot to be nervous of it… or afraid of the things he was supposed to have done. “The… T-Talvashoth hate the Qun? Why do—”

Sten exhaled slowly, like a long, weary sigh. “Tell me, Warden: why do _you_ fight?”

“Me?” I blinked again, confused afresh. “Um. Because… because I have to, I suppose. I mean, the darkspawn aren’t going to just _stop_.”

“Yes.” He inclined his head, as if relieved at a very stupid child finally understanding a simple sentence. “There is no other reason. The Tal-Vashoth wish us dead. And we wish to go on living. The point of our war is war.”

“Oh.” There was a certain logic to that, grim though it was. All the same, he’d made me too curious to leave it alone. “But… perhaps they have a point. The Tal-Vashoth, I mean.”

“Undoubtedly. They’ve used it to kill countless people.”

I winced. “Yes, but… a lot of what you’ve said about the qunari is a little… rigid. And there are many people who don’t wish to live under the Qun. Maybe the Tal-Vashoth are responding to something they believe is, uh, oppressive.”

“Oppressive? Death is also oppressive, Warden.”

That one stunned me into silence. As I exhaled, my breath misted on the cold air, and the fire crackled quietly. The smell of frost and wood smoke—something so familiar it had started to seem like home—sank its bitter claws into the back of my throat.

“I’m s—” I began, inclining my head as I remembered Sten’s dislike of apologies. “I mean, I did not intend to offend you by speaking of this, Sten.”

He grunted again: a low rumble, deep in his throat, as his eyes scanned the trees. “I have no feelings you can hurt.”

“I… I didn’t—”

I floundered, and was lost upon the roiling waves of embarrassment, confusion, and the certain knowledge that I had, once more, stuck my foot in it.

**_~o~O~o~_ **

The night wasn’t kind to me, and the morning wasn’t much better. As we all sat, haggard and bleary-eyed, around the fire, Wynne emerged from Leliana’s bender tent to inform us she was a great deal improved. As my relief over that began to subside, I struggled to tell whether Wynne’s apparent coolness towards me was because she blamed me for the whole mess, because of my outburst at Alistair, or merely due to the fact she’d spent so much time forced to work together with Morrigan. From what I could work out, each had augmented the other’s power, and Leliana owed her life to it… but did it come at a price?

Morrigan was keeping even more to herself than usual. She looked sickly, like she had at Soldier’s Peak, but she was being so spiky if anyone _did_ dare to speak to her that it was hard to gauge how unsettled she really was.

Still, as we discussed our options that morning, things did seem a little brighter… briefly.

“She’s not going to die, then?” Daeon piped up, thumbing a gesture towards the tent. “Is she going to turn, or—”

“You know what happened at the camp!” Aegan snapped, glaring at him. “You know what the keeper said! Those who were wounded in the attack died, or turned. That is _all_ there is!”

“Then she’ll become a werewolf?”

“We don’t know that!” Alistair protested, earning himself a series of filthy scowls from the assembled Dalish, who apparently still believed that, if they had to suffer the indignity of travelling with shems, this one could at least have the decency to keep his mouth shut. “Wynne said—”

I wanted to intervene, but I feared making it worse. It felt like everyone was angry with me even before I opened my mouth, and all I could think about was Sten’s words from the night before… his grey fiends wearing the faces of men.

What face would Leliana be wearing, if we couldn’t get help for her? And what of the rest of us? There were dark, ugly shadows in all our natures, and my own flaws seemed closer to the surface than ever.

“How soon could Leliana be moved?” I asked Wynne, cutting across the burgeoning argument and receiving glares from all sides for my trouble. “Because we have one of two choices here. Either we split up, and you stay to look after her, or she’s strong enough to come with us. They know we’re here. We can’t just back out of the forest. Maker only knows how long it’ll be before those things attack again… and we might see Witherfang himself next time.”

Farriel bristled, and started to say something in a broken blend of Common and Elvish about beating the filthy dogs like we had last time. Zevran kicked him on the ankle: quick as a snake strike, but a dismissive, lazy movement, as if he was hushing a dog.

“Still,” he said, regarding me coolly, and apparently oblivious to Farriel’s angry protests. “If you seek the demon’s heart in the first place….”

“On _our_ terms!” I said, shaking my head vehemently. “If we wait, next time there’ll be more of them. They’ll be prepared. They’re not stupid, and you can bet they know what we’re here for. If Zathrian knows about the power of Witherfang’s heart, then I’m sure _they_ do too.”

“It’d all be a damn sight easier if he’d just been honest to start with,” Alistair grumbled… which didn’t endear him to the hunters.

“You dare question the keeper?” Aegan demanded, his face blazing with ire.

“Yes!” Alistair snapped. “I don’t blame him alone for this, but we wouldn’t be in quite such a mess if he’d been just a _tiny_ bit more truthful, don’t you think?”

Revasir shot me an awkward look, like he wanted to take a side in the fight but didn’t know which way to turn, and that shocked me. As little as a day or so ago, I wouldn’t have believed he’d falter for a minute in his devotion to his Keeper. Still, I didn’t like to see any of them conflicted. Yes, Zathrian had lied, but would hearing that the beasts were clearly intelligent beings have given us anything more to work with? There was no way to reason with them, nothing we had to barter… what else could we do but keep pushing down the path we’d made?

Of course, we argued around each other in circles for a while longer. Finally, Wynne grew annoyed and quieted the debate with sharp, frosty words—accused us all of acting like children when there was so much more at stake than the petty squabbles over whose injured pride throbbed worst. Things almost burst into another row at that, our respective tempers and humiliations only silenced by Leliana herself, making her first tentative movement from the bender tent. No one had expected that, but evidently she’d had enough of allowing herself to be the invalid over whom we quarrelled.

Morrigan was assisting her, and she was still deathly pale and swaddled in bandages, but she was moving, and more or less upright.

I was astounded, and I realised for the first time how convinced I’d been that she would die where we’d laid her, or wake as something more terrible than I could imagine.

“I think we should move on,” she said, her voice still and small, and her breathing a little shallow, but her resolve clearly firm. “We are so near the centre of the forest—the beasts’ lair cannot be far. We mustn’t give up.”

Wynne glowered at all of us with self-righteous smugness, and a grudging kind of consensus was reached… though no one seemed keen to look the woman who’d brokered it in the eye.

Leliana appeared to accept that. She stood, slightly stooped, her face pale and her cut-glass eyes lowered, and she seemed so quiet. I could hardly bear to look at her, but not from revulsion at what she bore in her blood. Her wounds—the bloody dressings still so evident at the neck of the loose tunic she wore—felt like they were scored into my flesh, and I wished they might have been.

“Come now,” Wynne chided, removing her patient from Morrigan’s clutches. “You’ve made your point, but you really should be resting….”

Leliana glanced at me as, decisions made, the group began to fragment again, but I looked away and found some chore with which to busy myself… like the coward I was.

**_~o~O~o~_ **

We agreed to rest up until later in the day, giving the mages time to recuperate, and ensuring we all had full bellies, so we could walk into the night if need be. The atmosphere was tense and strained, and the smell of Sten’s ground-rations stew did nothing to diffuse it.

The Dalish withdrew to a tight knot as far from the rest of us as they could get, and barely anyone spoke. Wynne was terse and cool when she came to tell me that Leliana wanted to speak with me.

“Don’t you dare tire her out,” Wynne warned, and there was no note of playful teasing in her voice.

I promised I wouldn’t and, after she nodded and took her leave, I watched her head over towards Alistair, who immediately looked away, as if he hadn’t been peering in our direction at all.

Everything felt so hopelessly, irreparably awkward, and I hated it… almost as much as I hated crawling into Leliana’s little tent. It felt like squeezing into her deathbed, though I knew full well the curse wouldn’t take her yet and that, thanks to the sheer volume of healing she’d had, she would be walking from it soon enough. All the same, there was that thick, greasy smell of ointment, and the coppery, bitter residue of magic in the air. I couldn’t help but associate it with blood, and fear, and pain.

She was sitting up, bandaged heavily, and clad in her leather breeches and the tunic I’d noticed before: some sort of soft, earthy brown garment that she must have had stashed in her pack. It looked like a man’s clothing, and I wondered where she’d got it from—and why someone as interested in femininity as her would have it with her—but I was too tongue-tied to ask.

Leliana smiled weakly at me, the dimness under the leather tarp muting the colour of her hair and making her skin seem dull. The shapeless tunic skimmed over her slender curves, and made her look almost boyish.

“You’re having a time of it, aren’t you?” she asked softly.

“ _Me_?” I pulled a face. “It could be worse.”

_I could have been the one bitten…._

She shook her head. “It’s been hard for you. All of this. We can all see it… you don’t fit in the way you thought you would. I know what that’s like.”

She gave me a sorrowful, sympathetic look, and I was caught between humiliation—wonderful, that my short-comings were so _very_ obvious to everybody!—and anger at her assumption of understanding. She, who had blended so well into the fabric of the camp, who had been second only to Zevran in the flawless ease with which she took to the Dalish.

And yet… here she lay, bloodied and bandaged, and I couldn’t allow myself to resent her.

I puffed a breath between my lips ruefully. “Do you? You always seem so sure about everything. And I thought people who… who do what you do… I thought they were meant to be good at fitting in.”

Leliana smiled. “Only on the surface. And doing _that_ makes it harder to truly fit in anywhere.”

“Oh.”

I wriggled, adjusting my crunched-up seat on the hard ground. I had my legs folded beneath me, and I lacked the padding of blankets that she had. Outside the tent, I could hear weapons being sharpened, but I couldn’t tell who was doing the job until a few words of muttered Elvish suggested it was either Revasir or Aegan, one conversing with the other as he worked.

Leliana looked at me thoughtfully, and I squirmed, finally unable to keep in what was boiling in my mind.

“It’s been that obvious, has it? Everything I’ve fouled up?” I snorted, shaking my head incredulously. “It’s a mess… it’s been a mess since Redcliffe. And if I can’t organise _this_ properly, what hope do we have against the darkspawn? I… don’t know. I don’t know how to plan for an army. I-I… I can’t even plan for myself!”

Her smile widened, and she chuckled. “You sound like Alistair. And we both know _he_ sells himself short.”

I shut my mouth abruptly, feeling my cheeks pinken with warmth. Leliana’s smile faded slowly, but her gaze stayed fixed on mine.

“No… you have done so much more than you realise, Merien. You’ve kept us all together, kept us moving forwards. It’s no wonder you feel lost now; you’ve given a great deal of yourself to bring us this far. You just need to keep going… keep being who you are.”

I tried to keep the disdain off my face. It sounded like vacuous advice to me and, besides, who I was hadn’t seemed to be helping much recently.

“I’ll try,” I said instead, and Leliana nodded, apparently satisfied with that.

She seemed to be growing tired, and I thought I should prod her towards what she’d originally wanted to speak with me about. She smiled again when I asked, but it was a glassier, shallower kind of expression.

“Mm.” She reached out and, to my surprise, patted my arm lightly. “Yes. There’s something I wanted to tell you. I… I wasn’t entirely truthful before.”

My first thought was about the curse, and my heart clenched around the fear of what she might confess to feeling, but I need not have worried about fangs and fur.

“I need to tell you something… about Orlais,” Leliana said softly, almost as if she was beginning one of her stories.

At once, I thought of the lyrical things she’d said before—about the people who were simply the decorations to Val Royeaux’s great ballet of life, and the fashions for shoes that apparently consumed the ladies there—and I cringed inwardly, convinced I couldn’t possibly go through another conversation like that.

“It… it’s not true that I left because I was tired of the life,” she said, her gaze lowered to the blankets, where her hands were delicately folded. “Well, in a way I _was_ … but there is more that you should know.”

“It’s all right,” I soothed. “You don’t have to tell me anything. Not right now, anyway. We can talk about Orlais when you’re feeling stronger, and—”

“You must listen,” she said, gently but firmly. “This is important, Merien. It may affect us… _you_ , I mean… if I don’t—”

“No!” I made a strangled sort of noise, somewhere between panic and protest. “N-no… Wynne said how much better you were doing. You’ll be…. It’s going to be all right.”

Leliana just smiled sadly at me, and I felt my stomach lurch. She reached out to me again, and squeezed my fingers lightly.

“The truth of the matter is, I was being hunted in Orlais.”

I frowned. “Hunted? Why? By who?”

She sighed, and it was a small, sad sound that seemed to take the life from her voice, like the last of winter sunlight winking out behind a cloud.

“I was framed, betrayed by someone I thought I knew and could trust. Her name was Marjolaine. She was my mentor, my friend. She was the one who taught me the bardic arts—how to enchant with words and songs, to carry myself like a high-born lady, or blend in as a servant….”

Leliana blinked, the corner of her lips twisting into a wry little curl at the admission, and my frown deepened, though I said nothing. Beyond what little privacy the bender tent afforded, the small sounds of movement in the camp sneaked through the leather tarp; I could hear Maethor snuffling around outside. He never did like to leave me on my own for too long.

“I think Alistair already guessed, no?” Those clear turquoise eyes met mine, and a weary kind of sorrow seemed lodged there. “I have overheard it mentioned… an open secret in our little party, I suppose. You know what it is to be a bard in Orlais?”

Oddly enough, the intricacies of the Orlesian nobility’s love for one-upping each other through the use of genteel assassins was wildly outside the bounds of my experience. I knew only what Alistair had told me when we’d spoken—all right, gossiped—about his suspicions before and, given that we had accepted Zevran into our group without too much trouble, it had never seemed either appropriate or necessary to quiz Leliana about her past. If we allowed an Antivan Crow to travel with us, why not her?

Still… here it was from her own lips. I felt like I was the only one of us who hadn’t known, or fully understood.

“You were a— what? A spy?” I hazarded.

Leliana smiled softly. I hated it. If my innocence amused one more person, I was fairly certain I’d end up planting a dagger in them.

“In a way,” she said diplomatically. “You have heard of the Game? In Orlais, the nobility present their smiling faces to each other, but in secret they plot and scheme, always to outdo one another… it is a part of life for them. Always conniving to gain favour with the Empress, to outwit or humiliate their rivals in the court, but without ever once appearing rude or—worse—unfashionable. Of course, those rivalries, and the plots themselves, range from petty cruelties to the most vicious savagery. That… well, that is where the bards come in. We were the eyes, ears, and hands of our employers; but we were never more than playing pieces in the Game, whatever we were contracted to do.”

“Huh.”

I tried to keep the evidence of my discomfort from my face. The images I had in my head were probably nothing like the realities. I’d been born too late to remember the occupation, and my mental pictures of masked, mincing Orlesians who played with cruelty like pleasure were the stuff of stories, nothing more. Still, stories were all I had; stories had told me of the elven alienage in Val Royeaux that barely ever saw sunlight, and Leliana’s own well-meaning callousness had hardly helped. All her tales of grand ladies, and shoes, and how, in Orlais, elven servants who were pretty to look and had nice manners were so very highly valued by their masters—like prize-winning animals, as I’d rather acerbically suggested—left me very cold indeed.

However, despite everything we didn’t have in common, and despite everything I knew I didn’t know about her, I still thought of Leliana as my friend. And, sitting in the grim, waxy den that had been made around her illness, with her face so bleached of colour, and the flesh-memories of battle and fear still so deeply etched into my body, I couldn’t find it within myself either to reject her… or to be truly surprised at what she told me.

“So, this… Marjolaine—” I groped for the name. “—she betrayed you?”

“Yes.” Leliana nodded sadly, though her face grew tight, as if she was suppressing a great raft of emotions she would rather not have shared.

I wondered whether she hadn’t been at least a little as naïve as me, for what kind of spy was blind to betrayal? As she spoke, however, I got the sense that more lingered beneath the surface; not the bard she had been, whatever that truly meant, but the fragile intersection of her life as a bard and a woman.

“Marjolaine was a remarkable person.” Leliana’s gaze softened slightly, turning distant and hazy as she stared wistfully at the wrinkles in the blanket folded across her knees. “I cannot fully express the admiration I had for her, or the depth of my affection.”

It might have been the look in her eyes, or the way her fingers flexed, her thumb rubbing across her neat, smooth fingernails. I wasn’t sure exactly at what point her meaning became clear, but when it did hit me with clarity, I blinked a bit and felt clumsy. Leliana politely ignored my gaucheness; maybe she genuinely didn’t notice it.

“I loved her very much,” she went on, “but my devotion to her blinded me to her— well, I suppose you could say less than noble attributes. You can say it was my fault. Perhaps it was.”

She gave a little shrug, taking care in the gesture not to pull at her dressings, but even her skilful mask of nonchalance couldn’t hide the whole of her sadness. It was clearly a deep, deep hurt that she bore, and I was a little afraid of tugging at its edges.

“What happened?” I prompted.

“There was a man I was sent to kill,” Leliana said quietly. “I was to bring Marjolaine everything he carried. I don’t know who this man was… she gave me a name and a description, that’s all. I hunted him down and I found documents on his body… sealed documents.”

“Important documents?” I echoed dumbly, trying to keep pace with her tale, though my mind was busy trying to adjust, trying to filter this new information into the view I had of the woman I thought I’d known.

It was stupid of me to be so shocked, naturally. After all, I _didn’t_ know her, not really. It had been clear from the start that Leliana’s skills with a blade weren’t born of the chantry cloister. And yet I felt wrong-footed, like I had since we entered the bloody forest, and perhaps that was what it was. Maybe what I felt was the corruption of the place—its very roots lousy with the demonkin taint of Witherfang’s curse—creeping up through the moss and the dead leaves, and ingraining itself into my skin.

She gave a soft, mirthless laugh. “Hmm… well, yes, it turns out that they were. You see, my curiosity got the better of me, and so I looked at the letters. I don’t know why. Something told me that I needed to know what was in them.”

Ah, now _that_ sounded more like the Leliana I knew. She’d probably convinced herself that the Maker had ordained she should peek beneath the seal.

“What I saw shocked me. Marjolaine… had been selling all kinds of information about Orlais to other countries. Nevarra and Antiva, among others. It was treason.” She made a small, self-deprecating little expression, somewhere between a smile and a look of embarrassment. “Some—perhaps many bards—do work in such a way, but I had always believed that Marjolaine did not. This was an unhappy surprise for me.”

“Because she was a traitor?”

That little half-smile tugged at Leliana’s lips again. “Hmm… my life as bard taught me that my loyalties should be kept fluid. My main concern was that her life would be in danger if she was caught.” She shrugged delicately as I attempted to keep my face impassive, and my surprise at such political nonchalance in check. “Well, Orlais has been at war with so many countries. It takes a harsh view of such things… as I later discovered.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, glad of something to latch onto that drew us away from the matter of the crime itself.

She shook her head, the little Dalish-style braids she still wore in her hair swaying amongst the red tresses. “I should have left well alone, but I didn’t. I had to tell Marjolaine I feared for her life. Of course, she brushed aside my concern, and said it was all in the past. That is why the documents had to be destroyed, she said.”

I’d had the sense since the beginning that this story wouldn’t end well, and I pressed my lips together glumly. “She lied?”

Leliana nodded. “I believed her, though. That was the thing. I kept believing, right up until the moment they showed me the documents, altered by her hand to make _me_ look the traitor.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“The Orlesian guards. They captured me… did terrible things to make me confess and reveal my conspirators.” She shuddered, the memories clearly shifting within her like dark tides, and her fingertips worked across the knuckles of her other hand as she stared at the folds of the blanket. “I endured a traitor’s punishment, and at the end of it, all that awaited me was eternity in an unmarked grave. Still… the skills Marjolaine had taught me proved useful, for I was able to escape as soon as I saw an opportunity.”

“You didn’t try to find her, after what she’d done to you?”

I don’t know why I asked. Would I have done that? It was unlikely. If it had been me, enduring all the horrors that my brain could conjure as things that happened to traitors, then I would have fled and gone to ground with my pain, my humiliation… my betrayal.

Leliana shook her head, quite certainly, and I was almost surprised. So much of me still saw her as the bright, unwavering flame she’d been when she became a hero to the folk of Redcliffe. It seemed impossible to believe she could be as fragile as her story suggested.

_As easily broken as me._

“No. I was tempted to confront her, certainly; I was furious, betrayed, but what could I do against her? If she thought I was coming for her, Marjolaine would only have had me caught again.” She sighed, but it sounded less sad this time; more like a reflection than a breath of sorrow. “No… I fled, to Ferelden, to the Chantry and the Maker. I believe, whatever else happened, it was the hand of the Maker that guided me to Lothering. My time there was healing. You see, Ferelden protected my person, and the Maker saved my soul.” Leliana looked up at me shyly, and smiled. “And then He brought me to you. Everything I said about my vision—that’s true. And that is the reason I am here. The real reason. No more lies between us, at least in this.”

Lying there, still pale, with the bandages and the man’s over-sized tunic dwarfing her frame, she was such a strange mix of strength and vulnerability. I didn’t know whether this new truth of hers was the whole truth, or whether there was some other version of events loitering in the shadows of her past. The story felt unfinished and, if I knew anything about Leliana, I knew she wasn’t one to let a narrative hang unended.

“So… what of Marjolaine?” I asked. “She just, what, got away with it?”

Leliana gave me a small smile. “So far. I don’t know. I suppose, one day, I should like to settle that old score. But… well, for now, we have more pressing worries, don’t we?”

I tried not to look at the bandages that peeped from the neck of her tunic.

“We won’t be in this bloody forest forever,” I said, though I wasn’t even sure I believed that myself.

Already, it seemed an eternity since we’d first set foot in this horrible place. I’d promised my friends we’d spend just a few days searching for the Dalish and securing a signature on the treaties… and instead, we were mired in more strife, and I had lost sight of myself among the trees.

Leliana’s smile faded. “No,” she said quietly. “I doubt we will. But there is something else. Wynne and Morrigan have done so much for me—and I have no doubt at all that we _will_ find Witherfang, and we will end this terrible curse—but… but there is something I wanted to say.”

She reached out again, taking my hand in hers, and squeezing my fingers gently. The gesture surprised and unsettled me; it felt like affection, but the kind of affection that comes with a burden, the way responsibility hedges a mother’s smile.

I wet my lower lip nervously. “What…?”

“If the worst should happen,” Leliana murmured, “or if I was to— well, you know…. I want you to promise me that you won’t let me hurt anyone. Do you understand? Before it happens… I would rather you strike me down than let me destroy any of our friends.”

I stared at her. Little patches of light seemed to spot my vision as my head spun, and yet my thoughts were clear. She was asking no more, no different than I would, if I was in her place, but it was still so horrible an image.

I swallowed heavily and managed to nod, clenching my hand on hers and feeling her slender fingers press together against my palm.

“Yes,” I croaked. “I mean, if…. Yes. I promise I’ll try. I won’t let— I mean, _if_ ….”

“If,” she echoed kindly. “Yes. Thank you.”

She let go of my hand, and agreed when I said she should rest before Wynne gave her another dose of healing and then, in a few hours’ time, we began to think about moving out.

It felt so ridiculous to say those things—to plan for anything—when I had agreed to put a knife in her throat, but I didn’t know how else to react. The words spun through me in a daze, and I was glad to get out of the tent, gulping down the cold air and the smell of frost on the breeze, the way a prisoner tries to glut himself on the sky.

**_~o~O~o~_ **

I went back to the centre of our camp shaken and silent. My head seemed to buzz with words, but I couldn’t think clearly. The others were sitting around the dry scar of the fire; Wynne and Morrigan were arguing about something… Wynne didn’t seem happy that day unless she was picking holes in someone.

“I owe you no explanation,” Morrigan was saying, her face wrapped around a scowling sneer. “There is no writing upon my brow that says: ‘Please, guide me!’.”

Wynne snorted, one hand extending to gesture to the awkwardly assembled bodies. “You are travelling with these people! It behoves you to be civil.”

Alistair was squatting nearby, rooting through his pack in search of something. He looked up guiltily, with an expression that clearly said ‘Leave me out of it’, but neither mage seemed to be listening. Zevran, meanwhile, continued to lounge against one of the tree trunks, smiling faintly, as if he was enjoying the chaos.

“You are transparent, old woman,” Morrigan spat. “Do not bring up our companions, when all you wish is for me to be civil to _you_. I am not one of your Circle apprentices, to hang on your every word! I am not Alistair, who sees in you some surrogate mother.”

Wynne’s face blazed with barely suppressed irritation. I glanced reflexively at my friend, just in time to see him begin to turn red, and return with determined industriousness to finding whatever it was he was looking for in his pack. Morrigan seemed satisfied, her golden eyes half-lidded, and her lips curved into a hard, cruel smirk.

For a moment, I truly thought we’d have a duel erupt in front of us, with fireballs and pillars of ice and flame… but Wynne merely straightened her back to poker-like heights of propriety, and raised her chin.

“No,” she said stiffly. “It is clear you are _nothing_ like Alistair.”

His ears had turned so red I thought they might drop off, and Zevran finally couldn’t contain his gentle sniggering.

I wanted to say something, but I knew it would do no good. Morrigan crossed her legs, spreading her robes out around her, and causing the raven feathers she wore to rustle like some indignant bird as she shrugged.

“Indeed. Then take your lectures elsewhere,” she said dismissively. “They mean nothing to me.”

I should have been used to the witch’s habit of finding people’s raw nerves and dancing across them until the torment was too much to bear, but I couldn’t stand it at that moment. I crossed to the far side of the camp, away from the fire and the tent, and the warmth, and there—amid the ragged trees and soft mud—I sat on the ground and found a little peace and quiet.

Breathing deeply, inhaling the musk of the earth and the sharpness of rot and pine sap, I wondered if the Creators ever spoke in this kind of silence. It had always been hard to believe in the hand of the Maker upon my life, but his seemed as good a name as any to put to the things of the world that I didn’t understand. Growing up, the Chantry had taught us a lot about mystery and the acceptance of it: as elves, our lot was to tolerate the unknowable and acquiesce to the station we were born to; no more, no less.

I still had a great deal of thinking to do about the Chantry, and a great deal to realise what humans had made it into. I knew so little of the place where politics and faith join together, or the struggles for dominance between them.

Of course, from where I sat, the Dalish didn’t look so perfect anymore. I no longer thought they had all the answers, and I was beginning to see the holes in their masks—the eyes and the lips behind the faces of proud, wild, true elves, who still saw and spoke like the losers of a great war. 

A heard a gentle cough, and opened my eyes to see Revasir standing before me, which was an ironic enough codicil to my thoughts to make me smile. He raised his thick, dark brows, and held out a piece of his horrible deer jerky: the last left of it, by the looks of things. I tried not to grimace, but shook my head, fairly sure I couldn’t manage to be that polite.

“No, thank you. It’s all right.”

He grunted and sat down heavily beside me, his sharp scent of leather and moss invading the air around me, and propped his elbows on his knees before giving a short, deep sigh.

I blinked, with some incongruous, ridiculous impulse of alienage modesty flitting through me. A man had invited himself to sit at my side, and I wasn’t sure why, or how I should react. I glanced curiously at him. He looked troubled, and he had something clenched in his other hand. I raised my eyebrows and—with this strangely comfortable wordlessness between us, as if we didn’t _need_ to speak—he unfurled his thick, weathered fingers to show me a small, dark arrowhead. It was narrow, like the others of Dalish make we’d found before we located the camp—all right, before Mithra had located _us_. I had no idea why he’d picked it up, much less brought it to show me, but I almost didn’t want to ask. I was afraid to break the silence, only to fill it with more mistakes and misunderstandings. Afraid of things I didn’t want to hear, perhaps, as well as the things I wished I didn’t already know.

Revasir watched me carefully. His vallaslin curled like shadowed vines across his skin, his knotted hair frizzed and rough with the dozens of little trinkets tied into it. I supposed each of them had meaning: maybe the Dalish exchanged them as gifts, or won them through trials or ties of passage or something. I hadn’t asked before, and doing so now felt clumsy… although I should probably not have worried about that. I’d made a fool of myself often enough, and in front of enough people, that I should have thrown off all the pride and dignity that bitter gossips back in the alienage used to say were the airs and graces Father put on.

Revasir pushed his open palm towards me, encouraging me to take the arrowhead. I wasn’t sure why, but I obeyed. As my fingers brushed his skin, I was aware of its warmth… or maybe how cold I felt. Winter would be upon us in its full ferocity soon, and I didn’t want to think about it. Back in Denerim, the cold and the ice and the mud were bad enough, but the city had things like cobblestones and paving—things that used to be the bedrock my life was built on—and I didn’t relish trying to negotiate the Fereldan landscape without them. It had been hard enough going so far… though, before that, we _did_ have to get out of the forest alive.

Funny how such a grim thought could be so appeasing.

I realized Revasir was still watching me expectantly, so I peered at the arrowhead that now lay in my palm. It felt light, and it was made of a greyish kind of flint, its edges knapped to a thin, almost flaky finish.

“Old,” he said quietly, his voice a hushed murmur. “Older than any I have seen.”

I turned the thing in my fingers, surprised at its delicacy. It felt as if it should be fragile, it was so light; as if it might crumble away at my touch.

“Is it?”

I didn’t want to speak, I found. I was sick of my own voice, my own heart, my own head—sick of my insecurity and self-pity.

Revasir reached across, picking the arrowhead from my hand. His touch made me catch my breath, simply because I hadn’t expected it.

“Yes,” he said, turning the arrowhead thoughtfully in his fingers. “We are close to something here. The People have walked in this place many years. But not so far into the forest’s heart. Not in my time; not in my father’s.”

“Because of the war?” I asked. “The Veil being thin, and everything?”

He nodded. “Mm.”

The thinning light seemed to turn soft on the arrowhead’s edges. It wouldn’t be long until dusk began to draw in… I was hoping we would have put some ground under our feet by then.

“What is it, d’you think? Where the elves used to camp? Maybe people who went in after the werewolves,” I added, half to myself in some spool of speculation. “I don’t know what their lair’s going to be like. Do they make dens? Tunnels, or something?”

He shrugged. “We will see, yes? When we face them again.”

“I suppose.”

There was no outright accusation in anything Revasir had said, but guilt still seeped into me—the way the cold and the damp did—and it chilled my bones, making them achingly heavy. Trying to tell myself it wasn’t my fault didn’t help. It seemed like they were all thinking it, all blaming me for what had happened to Leliana—and though I knew those were stupid thoughts, they came all the same. _Just the same as the purge. My fault_.

“You worry about her,” Revasir observed. “Your friend.”

“Yes.”

A thin glimmer of dying sun gilded the trees, making those that had any semblance of leaves clinging to them look like lace, or crystals of ice against the grey shreds of sky. I glanced at him, watching the fleeting look of sympathy scatter across his hard profile.

“How long? After there weres attacked, how long did it take for the people who were wounded—?”

“I don’t know,” Revasir said tightly. “The keeper… kept such things hidden from us.”

I said nothing. The undercurrent of uncertainty in his voice was enough. He shrugged again, frowning at the leaf litter between his feet.

“Is good. No one wants to see their clansman become such. But… Deygan remained alive several days. Unturned.”

“Mm.” I nodded slowly, thinking of the dead I’d seen in the healer’s tent.

The ambush had been a week ago then, Zathrian said, and not all the sick had begun to turn. That meant Leliana had time—if she was lucky—but how much of that time would be nothing but pain and suffering? I thought of Zathrian’s wounded, kept drugged and mumbling, lying on their backs and waiting for death, either from the maulings they’d received, or from the healer’s blade.

If the worst came to the worst, could I do that for her? Could I do what she’d asked? And was it such a pure blessing, when Zathrian’s portrayal of the creatures as mindless beasts was so clearly wrong?

They had speech, and intelligence enough to plan, to reason… and they burned with such hatred for him.

“How long has Zathrian been your keeper?” I asked.

Revasir puffed out a breath before he answered, like a man who wasn’t sure how to count that many years. “ _Long_ time. Before my birth, and my father’s. Longer than that. He has been with us for more than a hundred seasons, at least. Our light, blessed by the Creators. He will lead us back to Arlathan.”

The way he said it made it sound like the certainty of catechism. I nodded politely, though. It didn’t seem unbelievable to think that the keeper was that old. He’d certainly seemed ancient to me; an old man with a mage’s curious fragility about him… that kind of terrible strength wrapped in weakness. After all, at first glance, Wynne was an old woman, and Morrigan was a pale, slender woman with wrists as narrow as a child’s. Who knew what secrets lay behind the swathes of Zathrian’s robes?

“You have those dreams,” Revasir said, with the confidence of one acknowledging something that is obvious to him.

At first, I thought he meant Grey Warden dreams, and I started to wince.

“Arlathan,” he clarified, glancing sidelong at me. “You would be as one of the People, no?”

No one had put it quite so succinctly before. I looked uncertainly at him, but the denial I had in mind didn’t quite leave my lips.

“Um….”

“You could become elvhen, in time,” Revasir said nonchalantly, peering out across the trees, towards the knot of the camp. “You have much strength, much kindness, in you. Honour, too. Like a Dalish woman.”

He looked at me thoughtfully, and I wasn’t sure if this was flirtation, or whether there was a ‘but’ coming. Either way, I started to feel self-conscious and embarrassed.

“This is why I do not know why you allow it.”

I frowned. “Allow what?”

“The human,” he said, shrugging dismissively as if he was merely commenting on the weather… though I noticed the way he was avoiding my eye. “The other Grey Warden.”

Despite myself, and the wash of a blush already cresting my neck, I wanted to smile at that. _The other Grey Warden._ That epithet was usually reserved for me, not him. Still, I wasn’t as mortified as I expected to be. I wasn’t ashamed, I realized. Not truly. Not anymore. What did I have to be ashamed of now, except for the way I’d treated Alistair?

He’d done everything for me—Maker, he’d put himself in front of the weres’ jaws for me—and all I could do was shower him with spite and bitter anger.

“You, ah….” Revasir cleared his throat awkwardly. “You are not bonded?”

I looked at him uncertainly. “Does that mean, I don’t know… like, married? I-I don’t know how the Dalish….”

He shook his head as my words trailed off. “No. Not always married. Meaning to marry, perhaps?”

“Oh.”

I wasn’t sure I knew what to say to that. Alistair and I hadn’t talked about anything. We’d barely even managed to acknowledge that we liked each other, much less examine what that really meant. What _could_ it mean, anyway, when we were in the middle of all this? There was the Blight, the darkspawn, the war… not to mention my wholesale rejection of the man I was supposed to care for.

I shifted uncomfortably, avoiding Revasir’s gaze.

“We’re… well, it’s not— It’s complicated,” I finished lamely.

He grunted; it was hard to tell whether that was acceptance or derision.

“Is it? Surely it does not have to be. A man makes his intention clear to a woman; she denies or accepts him. They talk, they agree to present themselves to the elders. An agreement is made.”

I frowned petulantly. “I don’t have any elders. Not anymore.”

The hunter’s expression stiffened, then softened, his vallaslin shifting like the easing of taut ropes. His eyes glittered in, and he let out a slow breath.

“No. Forgive me. But… you would do. If you became _elvhen_. Like your kinsman.”

I blinked owlishly. “What?”

Revasir shrugged. “Daeon has proved himself. He has shown his willingness to learn our ways; be one of us. The Creators accept this. In time, he will take his vallaslin, and he will stand as one of the People.”

I blinked some more. Somehow, I seemed to have the grit of wood ash and confusion in my eyes, and breaking up the little hollow of our camp into slivers that caught behind my eyelids was the only way I could make sense enough of the moment to think.

“Maybe,” Revasir said slowly, his accent lending the word an odd lilt as he drew it out, “if these things come to a good end, it shall be so.”

“Er….” I said, rather hopelessly. Was he really suggesting what it sounded like he was?

I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure of anything in that uncomfortable scrape of minutes, and my answer to that was to scramble in an ungainly way to my feet, dusting my hands against the seat of my breeches.

“We should get a move on if we’re going,” I declared, galvanised into action by the sheer force of panic.

My feet crunched on the leaves as I moved briskly back towards the others; back towards the journey we had ahead of us, towards everything I had come to know and to trust… back towards the duty I had as a Warden, and the bonds that were too sacred to break.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the unexpected hiatus ends! Apologies for delay - this has been a long break, even for me, but I'm back after surgery and planning to get Vol. 4 finished asap. My To Do pile is still taller than I am, but it feels good to be back in Thedas again. : )

We rested longer than we’d intended to, snatching sleep from the night’s cold, iron jaws. As I sat before the fire, huddled in a rough blanket, I wondered if the urgency had somehow left us—as if we’d all started to believe that we’d never get out of the forest alive, and therefore it didn’t matter if we moved more slowly than we should have done. It seemed possible. Besides, with Leliana’s injuries and all the things that probably awaited us to consider, perhaps our reticence wasn’t surprising. No one was _that_ eager to face the wolves again.

I didn’t want to think it was true. Sure, the likelihood of our actually pushing back the Blight was next to none, especially with the entire country in a tangle and no help to be had from what remained of the Grey Wardens beyond Ferelden… but it was one thing not to be confident of success, and quite another to admit defeat.

The way things were as I sat there, staring glumly into the flames, it felt like we were all close to giving up. I didn’t want that. I told myself it was a betrayal of the dead at Ostagar, although the bitter voice in the back of my head asked what the army of a shemlen king should have meant to me. I thought briefly of Cailan in his golden armour, smiling when Duncan presented me to him—me, meeting the king! What would Father have said?—and taking my words away with his bold, majestic pomp.

No… if my despondency was a betrayal of anyone, it was Duncan. I often thought of him, wondered what he’d seen in me, and wondered what he’d known of my mother. I picked at the questions like half-dried scabs, trying to prise them up and feeling the tearing of new skin beneath not yet ready to be exposed to the world.

It hurt. All of it hurt. My past, my present, my future—nothing but loss and grief and pain, or so it seemed at that moment.

My old self-indulgent moping, come to claim me once again. It was a hole I’d tried to pull myself out of before, and I forced myself to think of the pep talks I’d had from Wynne and from Alistair… only thinking of that stung all the more.

I was exhausted, and I couldn’t clear my mind. Thoughts hung on me like wet clothes, and the atmosphere in our little camp remained thick and rancid, tight with the anticipation of more swipes and bickering. Just past the glow of the flames, I could see Wynne working on Leliana’s wolf bite. So far, nothing had changed, though the mage’s grave expression and intense concentration said much. I was afraid to ask her any questions, and I burrowed down beneath my blanket.

Not even Maethor was near me; he’d settled into his own scrape by the fire, though he glanced at me from time to time, and I drew a certain amount of comfort from the attention. 

Eventually, my gritty eyelids drooped, and I let myself fall into the void of sleep. I don’t know how long I was out, but I dreamed that darkspawn erupted from under the ground, tearing up the roots of screaming, writhing trees, and chewing the bones of the dead—shemlen and elvhen alike—in their jagged, yellow-toothed mouths.

They swarmed like ants, pouring through the wreckage of the forest the way they’d poured through the broken stones at the Tower of Ishal, and just before I woke I felt the flesh being stripped from me. I was swallowed in their tide, pulled down among them and torn to pieces but, instead of blood, greasy black ichor spilled from my wounds, and it bubbled between my lips when I tried to scream… I think I drowned in it. Either way, I awoke with a jolt, catching my breath in the uncertainty of whether I’d cried out or not. I hoped I hadn’t—I disliked embarrassing myself like that—but the camp seemed quiet, so I took advantage of the silence and lay perfectly still beneath my blanket, trying not to shiver, and trying not to panic.

Somewhere in the thick of the trees, birds’ wings rustled, and I glanced across the low-burning fire. Morrigan wasn’t there. I must have slept for at least a few hours, though the sky wasn’t yet light. I lay back against the hard ground, and waited for my breaths to slow and the world to start seeming normal again. Foolish, of course. Nothing had been normal for so long now. 

Some nights, when I woke like that, I’d lie still and count an inventory in my head of everything I missed. Father, Soris, Shianni… our house, and the knots in my pallet that dug into my back when I slept. The crooked floorboards, and the buckets of flowers girls sold on gate trade. The goats and chickens, geese and sheep brought into the square on market day, and the colours of traders’ stalls. My mother’s stories, and her laughing brown eyes. My innocence, and the way I’d once believed that I would live my whole life in the alienage, and die an old woman who had seen the births of her grandchildren.

The only death that awaited me now was one of violence. Wherever and whenever it found me—now, or when the Archdemon led the horde through the valley—that was how I’d go, and I wouldn’t even have been married, much less old and happy.

There was no sense in letting myself get maudlin, of course, so I turned over and tried to put the thoughts from my mind. I was cold, and I couldn’t get warm. Daeon wouldn’t have his alienage life either… I thought of that, but it didn’t sting the same way my losses did. I told myself I was selfish: would _he_ ever have a Dalish wife and half-bred children? Well, all right, maybe he would, if he got out of this mess alive. The clan took those who proved themselves as their own; their acceptance was complete, once earned, and that led me back to Revasir’s unsettling intimations. Not that it mattered. Whether the Dalish might ever have a place for me or not, I was a Warden, and I had my duty; the duty I’d never wanted, but which had been the price for all I’d done. Did I deserve it? I wasn’t sure. In the blood-bathed light of everything that had happened since I left Denerim, I no longer felt any shred of guilt or remorse for Vaughan’s death. If it had ever really felt like murder, it didn’t anymore.

The first life I’d ever taken—the guard I’d choked, the way an elven girl should never have found the strength to do—didn’t hang on me as heavily as it had done. None of them did. Sometimes, I wondered if I was beginning not to care… or if it didn’t matter so much because they’d been shems.

Vaughan didn’t matter. I was sure of that. The only way that bastard had ever mattered was because killing him and his friends had brought such terrible repercussions for the alienage, and the people I loved. That was the only way I could count his death as a sin, and it wasn’t his blood that I regretted… just how far it had spilled.

I wondered, as I lay there, whether that made me a bad person, or a harder person than I’d once been. Was I growing bitter and cold? The horrible thought crept through me that, just maybe, it was the taint. Perhaps, with every day, I was losing a little more compassion, a little more decency, until eventually I’d become the withered, corrupted thing I saw in my dreams, lost among the seething throng of vile, cankerous flesh. 

I told myself not to think things like that, and I tried to turn my mind to the future—a good, clean future, where the Blight was ended and this insufferable, impossible darkness lifted—but it was hard. I doubted somehow that I’d live to see it, and dreaming of distant days that might or might not come to pass wasn’t exactly something in which I’d ever been well-versed. I’d lived in the present my whole life, because I’d had to; in the alienage, there was no luxury of maybes for us.

I stared at the deep russet embers of the fire, vaguely aware of soft sounds and movements beyond it. Most of us were bunked down in blankets and the occasional Dalish fur—no sense in putting up the tents when it took so much time and effort, and made us vulnerable.

I blinked and, after a moment, realised that the jumble of shapes and murmurs was Zevran and Farriel, and that they were… being somewhat intimate. I caught a glimpse of bodies half-shrined in blankets, mouths meeting and bare limbs grappling beneath their woollen cocoon, a snatch of calf or elbow visible, then hidden again. Briefly, I saw Zevran’s bare back, with the intricate, scrolling lines of Crow tattoos running across it, and I blushed and turned onto my other side, trying to pretend I wasn’t aware of what they were doing. In truth, I couldn’t be entirely sure exactly what that _was_ —presumably two men did most of the same things other people did, not that I had a lot of experience or imagination on that score—but the quiet breaths of laughter and purrs of pleasure gave me enough of an idea. And they were doing it right there by the fire. Next to everybody.

I pulled the blanket up to my ears, silently scandalised, hotly embarrassed… and maybe more than a little bit jealous.

**_~o~O~o~_ **

We moved out shortly before dawn. It was cold and dark, the dew and the frost riming everything, turning the forest to a crisp, silver, skeletal world around us, and I struggled to put one foot in front of the other in the blackness. We walked, though. We had to. We had to press on, deeper into the forest’s heart, and the lair of the beasts.

It just wasn’t as simple as that first seemed.

In Denerim, I had been used to walking. Every day, we had trudged back and forth for water, for gate trade… just to get from chore to chore. There, the inconveniences and the obstacles became part of the furniture of privation. You had to walk so many yards, avoid so many grates and sewers, and so many slop buckets being thrown from upper storey windows… but you became accustomed to the routine. Here, the forest seemed to move around us, every tree a mangled grasp of hands that threatened to snare and challenge. Revasir had kept up with the trail signs, and more than once we seemed to come across a sign he’d already left. He grew frustrated and angry, and the hunters took to talking amongst themselves in irate Elvish, drawing away from the rest of us to squabble.

Alistair huffed out a breath, squinting up at the trees. “We’re lost, aren’t we?” he said quietly, apparently to the forest at large. “Completely bloody lost.”

The sun was just beginning to come up, and the whole place was wreathed in thick white mist. It clung to the ground, slinking along the leaf litter and coiling around the tree roots; moisture dripped from the bare trees. I was reminded of the all-pervading dampness in the Korcari Wilds, and the way the dankness in the air there had seeped right into everything. I hunched my shoulders, staring across at the hunters and their hushed arguments.

Wynne pursed her lips. “I do not think we’re going to make any progress. There’s something… unusual here. I don’t believe this mist is entirely natural, and we certainly _have_ been this way before. We will be back at the beginning again at this rate.”

Leliana looked white and pinched, but she was holding her own, determinedly keeping pace. She glanced dubiously at the trees. “As long as we’re not caught in the middle of more of those… things.”

Zevran grimaced, a soft whistle passing through his teeth in agreement. “Yes. And it hard to know which of the trees have eyes, no? And claws.”

At his side, as ever, Farriel frowned. He inclined his head to Zev’s and spoke quietly; I caught the tail end of his broken blend of Common and Elvish, and discerned a question there… presumably about the injury the assassin had suffered before. Zevran shook his head and murmured a reply, and the boy touched his arm, fingers lightly tracing the leather guard beneath which the scar still ran over that tanned skin. It occurred to me that Farriel had seen more of Zevran’s assorted scars—not to mention his Crow tattoos—than any of us, and at once I tried to push those thoughts away, if not because they were unseemly then because they weren’t any of my business. Or so I told myself firmly.

In truth, I remained uncomfortable with what Zev was doing. That is, what I _thought_ — well, no… what I _perceived_ as his taking advantage of someone. For all his knowingness, Farriel’s affection—so obvious, so open and generous—seemed to me to be different to Zevran’s calculated worldliness, and I had a horror of seduction that Father would have been proud of instilling in me.

Oh, it wasn’t that I thought it wrong so much as I worried it was callous. I didn’t understand how Dalish morals—Dalish ways of knowing, of loving, of opening the heart and soul—differed from ours and, frankly, what did I know of love then, anyway? I was naïve and inept, and my discomfited concern showed itself in a way that looked a lot like prudery. If I’m honest, I can acknowledge there may have been a little personal frustration involved, though that isn’t the name I would have put to it at the time. I just knew I felt envious every single damn time Farriel touched him. Not that I was jealous of _him_ , or wanted Zevran myself; it was the freedom with which they expressed themselves that I envied, and the casual ease of their affection that confused and unnerved me. 

I shot a glance at Revasir, who was ferreting about in the brush again, and cleared my throat pointedly.

“Can you tell that? Which trees have the… the demons in them?”

He looked up from inspecting the ground for trail signs, another fragment of something that looked like ancient arrowhead in his fingers. “Sylvans? We have avoided them so far, no? But the path is changing. The forest—” He broke off, flexing one gloved hand as he groped for the right words, and he nodded at Wynne. “As she says. This mist….”

Aegan muttered something in Elvish under his breath, and spat on the ground. I didn’t understand the word, but I saw the way it made Daeon’s face pinch. He caught me looking at him and he shrugged, for a moment looking so like Soris in the act of trying to tell a lie that it made my throat tight.

“The Forgotten Ones,” Daeon said vaguely. “They’re… tricksters. Old gods who do no good. They were locked away from the world when the Dread Wolf betrayed the Creators, but… I don’t understand what—”

“Great,” Alistair announced, tipping his head back as a thin fall of rain opened over us like a curtain. “I knew it. We’re utterly lost. In the middle of a forest that’s moving around us. The storyteller said that, didn’t he? The forest is alive. It’s alive… and it doesn’t like us. Why does _nothing_ ever like us?”

“Your boundless personal charm, I imagine, Alistair,” Morrigan said dryly.

She’d been skulking silently at the back of the group but, as the hunters exchanged dark, sour glances, I was glad of the familiar rhythm of side-swipes and snideness. The rain pattered against the wet leaves, and fat droplets started to slide down my ears.

“ _My_ charm? You’re the one who calls people names.”

“Only when they deserve it,” Morrigan said, crossing her arms across her chest and glowering at him. “Idiot.”

“You see? _This_ is why everything we meet tries to kill us….”

Wynne sighed wearily, and I rubbed the back of my hand over my face, wiping the rain from my eyes as I watched the Dalish pretend that—even in the midst of all this bickering—we hadn’t hit on a grain of truth. 

“Is it true?” I asked. “What Hahren Sarel said? The forest is alive? I-It _moves_?”

Aegan scowled at me, as if my mouth was defiling his clan. “No. Maybe. I… what? Should that be so impossible?” he demanded. “You have seen the sylvans for yourself. Trees, corrupted by evil, turned to monsters. Yes, the forest lives! It is one creature, as it is many. Just as the Dalish.”

One clan, many hearts. Individuals, together as one people. His words had the ring of one of the storykeeper’s tales, and the anger in his eyes spoke of the hard place between belief and philosophy. I knew what it was to struggle in reconciling things I’d been raised to know as true with the world I saw around me, but I fell short of actually pitying him.

Sten grunted, the breath moving through his teeth like a storm wind as those bright violet eyes narrowed. “The trees do not walk,” he said shortly; the first he’d spoken since at least the day before, as far as I knew. “We have fought these things. They may be demons, but they are rooted.”

Aegan’s scowl deepened as he glared up at the qunari. I couldn’t help wondering if all Dalish hunters ended up weathered into suspicious distrust, the way he and Rhyn had both seemed to be. Was their life really so hard? I couldn’t believe they had it worse than alienage elves, whatever polemic the clan liked to spit about ‘outsiders’.

“Rooted, maybe,” he said darkly, “but there are more than demons here. This place is old. Even our tales only go back so far… who is to know what causes the forest’s heart to beat, or its body to breathe?”

Sten curled his lip. Perhaps those words sounded a little too close to his brand of qunari philosophy; perhaps, like the rest of us, he just wanted to be out of this damn place.

“So, the forest’s alive, then?” Alistair said, squinting into the trees again, and apparently not expecting an answer from the elves. “With a mind of its own? That’s what you’re saying? Turning us around… like an illusion. Mages can do that. Illusions, I mean. Enchantments. To protect things.”

Aegan looked unimpressed, his lips twisted into a sneer as if he wished the damn shem would just stop talking.

“What are you thinking?” I prompted, only too aware that the look filtering across Alistair’s face was the one that usually preceded some bright idea or other. As long as it wasn’t any sentence that started with the words ‘There should be a shortcut somewhere in this direction…’, I figured it was probably worth hearing.

He glanced at me, a slight frown on his face but a glitter of odd interest in his eyes, and, with the streaks of mud across his cheek and forehead, he looked like an excited little boy, alive with a puzzle suddenly solved before him.

“The war that was fought here,” he said, pointing at the soft ground beneath our feet as if this precise spot was relevant. “Elves, men… I’m sure there’ve been a _lot_ of battles. Bet some of them were Tevinter fighters. Magisters. They fought the barbarians in this part of the country once. Ages ago… I remember reading about it. A great general led Tevinter forces against the Clayne tribesmen, and—”

Revasir scoffed, shaking his head. “Dead names do not matter. Shemlen have fought amongst themselves forever.”

“No, _listen_!” Alistair protested, earning himself another set of Dalish scowls, though he barely seemed to notice them. “There was a magister who made him this set of armour—made it with blood magic—and it made the general almost invincible, but it turned his lieutenants mad with envy, and they rebelled. The whole outpost fell, tearing itself to pieces because each of the men started to want this fabled armour for himself, until the magister who’d made it murdered the last of them in revenge. The Clayne destroyed the outpost, and it was all lost, but—”

“But they said that the magister bound the souls of the traitors to the magical armour he had wrought,” Leliana cut in, smiling that strange, sadly sweet smile she reserved for the recollecting of poetically horrible stories. “Yes! I know the tale. His last act, before the leader of the Clayne fell upon the fort, was to scatter the pieces of the armour with the dead men, binding them to guard the secrets for eternity. There is a song of it, I think. But… I thought the barbarian lands were further south.”

Alistair shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it was here. Maybe it wasn’t even true. Point is, if there are old enchantments on this place, I’m betting they’re Tevinter. It could be, couldn’t it? Old magic, rotted in place.”

Aegan grimaced and muttered something in Elvish, at which Revasir smirked. I caught Daeon’s eye, and he looked away guiltily. As far as I understood what had been said, the gist was that bloody humans never _could_ see further than their own backsides… and I had to admit that the Dalish had a point.

Yes, perhaps we were walking on old Tevinter bones. But I strongly doubted that everything in the forest was shemlen-made.

“Well,” I said, peering suspiciously at the trees, “whether that’s true or not, I’m starting to think we’re going in circles. We either need to retrace our steps and try to get back to the camp, or work out how to push on. Morrigan?”

I looked enquiringly at her, and she heaved a theatrical sigh, scowling like a wild cat. “You wish me to search for a route from above, I suppose? ’Twill do little good, but I suppose I can try. Here,” she added, thrusting her staff at Leliana. “Hold this. Do _not_ drop it.”

With her typical poor grace, Morrigan stalked off between the trees, and there was an awkward silence—during which my companions and I dutifully stared at the ground, or our boots, or the sky, and the Dalish just looked perplexed—followed by the impatient cawing of a raven. She burst through the branches, wings flapping furiously as she adjusted to the new shape, and alighted on the ground ahead of us, glaring back with those bright golden eyes.

Aegan spat into the grass and rubbed at one of the wooden charms bound into his hair, while Revasir swore under his breath—I didn’t know what the Elvish word meant, but it sounded salty—and Daeon made a warding sign with the fingers of his left hand. It amused me slightly; he’d been quick enough to take Dalish religion, but he didn’t forsake old alienage superstition so soon.

“I’ll get her things,” I said, ducking between the tree trunks to fetch Morrigan’s robes, pack, and jewellery.

Once I returned with them bundled up in my arms, the raven let out a hoarse cry and shot upwards, rattling the trees in her wake. Maethor bounced, rising up a little on his hind legs and whimpering softly. He seemed to identify the bird, if not as Morrigan, then at least as not-prey (though for all I knew he _did_ recognise it was her; mabari were certainly bright enough, even if she probably smelled different), but it was still a flappy bird-thing, and presumably extremely tempting to chase. I patted his thick shoulders soothingly as he padded to my side, grumbling low in his chest.

“Good dog.”

All that remained, it seemed, was to wait and see if our tame witch—as the Dalish had called her—could figure out a path through the forest… ideally before it closed in around us. 

**_~o~O~o~_ **

We headed on, following Morrigan’s raven form, and maybe I did let my mind wander to the human legends Alistair had mentioned; magic-infused armour and Tevinter magisters murdering slaves to fuel their blood rites. All I could think was that we were treading on rotten bones, wherever we went in this place, and it sickened me.

Everything was turning bitter: my distaste for the forest and the deceits of trees, my fond hopes of finding familiarity amongst the Dalish, and my equally foolish pretensions to leadership. All my insistence on doing things my way had done was get us irreparably lost, and—probably, at the rate things were going—killed. I knew I was moping in self-pity, and even as I seethed to myself I hated my own self-indulgence, but it bubbled along anyway, like one of Shianni’s glutinous mystery meat stews.

I’d thought of my cousin several times when I looked at the Dalish, although I’d tried to push the thoughts away. I saw something of her fire and obstinacy in them, beneath the formality of their ways, and it galled me a little when I looked at Daeon. Why should he be here, and not her? The absurdity of that was obvious. I knew why, just as I knew Shianni would never have run away from the alienage even if she’d had the opportunity—that was no more likely than _my_ leaving would have been, if I’d had any kind of a choice—but it seemed unfair. I daydreamed her into Daeon’s place, almost; maybe I thought I could lessen the guilt I still carried that way. 

It didn’t last, of course, particularly when I grew aware of him striking up a conversation with Leliana as we walked, still keeping our eyes fixed on the raven flapping awkwardly between the trees above us.

“So… you’re a bard?” Daeon asked tentatively, as if he thought he was going to get into trouble with the others for voluntarily talking to a shem.

He probably would, I supposed, though at that point I didn’t care anymore. I was cold, wet, lost, and feeling less charitable than I had towards the heroic romance of the Dalish.

“Yes,” Leliana said, smiling knowingly. “I am.”

“An _Orlesian_ bard?” he pressed. “Does that mean—”

“Yep,” Alistair chimed in helpfully. “An _Orlesian_ bard, not just a bard from Orlais. They’re famous, you know.”

Daeon looked at Leliana with a new wide-eyed awe. “That explains why you’re here, then. With the Wardens, I mean.”

_The Wardens._ That made me want to laugh. Like we were more than a ragged pretence at the order; my motley band of companions who had achieved so much, and yet worn themselves so thin in trying.

“You’re assassins, I heard,” Daeon said boldly. “Skilled… subtle. Dangerous.”

At the other side of the group, Farriel murmured something quietly in Elvish, a filthy and exceedingly smug smile bursting over his face. Zevran, keeping pace beside him, snorted softly and—with a look at the boy that was part chastisement and part peculiarly unguarded affection—he made a muted but flawlessly accented reply. I gathered the whole exchange was something about assassins and their deadly weapons, though I missed the part of the punchline that came after “well-polished dagger”. Daeon let it slide, politely ignoring the gaping innuendoes occurring to his right.

“It must be quite a life, is all,” he said, glancing at the other hunters, as if he needed to apologise for trying to engage a shem in conversation.

I admired him for what he was trying to do; any attempt to lessen the palpable tension in the group was well worth it.

Leliana shrugged meekly. “I saw a great many wonderful things in Orlais. Also many terrible ones. It is a life that holds much beauty, and much ugliness.”

“But they do train you to kill?” Daeon pushed. “I mean, not just— uh. You know, the stories they tell about the bards from Orlais, they’re much more than just….”

He was getting flustered and growing pink in the cheeks, making plain what he alluded to. Leliana smiled, though she kept looking straight ahead, and there was a weariness to her expression that I suspected spoke as much of the past she’d been trying to outrun—this mysterious Marjolaine, and the treasonous plot which had nearly cost Leliana her life—as the curse beating in her blood.

“We are trained in all of the courtly arts, if that is what you mean. Unlike the Antivan Crows—present company excepted,” she added, sparing Zevran a polite nod which he acknowledged with a graceful wave of his fingers and a glittering smirk, “we are taught not just how to blend in, to disguise ourselves until the moment we strike, but also how to be of use to our employers as more than hired blades.”

“Like… spies?” Daeon said, not realising the comparison was—to Leliana—not just a clumsy and unfortunate one, but one that cut to the marrow.

The corner of her lips twitched, and her head shook slightly… more a gesture of reluctance than an outright demurral. 

“I wouldn’t say that, precisely. Things are done differently in Orlais. The Game is more subtle than that, you know.”

As we trudged through the forest, Morrigan cawing hoarsely in the boughs above, The Game seemed about as far removed from anything as the ladies’ salons and drawing rooms Leliana had told me about before. I remembered her enthusiasm as she talked of shoes with pretty ribbons and tapered heels (how did you walk in those, anyway?), and was thankful that my life had never contained any Orlesian subtlety.

“I don’t know about _subtle,_ ” Alistair said, with more than a trace of ignoble glee in his voice. “I mean, the stories _I_ heard were a little… racier. It had to do with how a bard assassinated her target. How they were, uh, lulled into complacency….”

I had been squinting up at the trees, trying to catch the edge of the sun through the branches, but I glanced at Daeon in time to see him look as if he’d swallowed his own tongue.

“Erk. Er… really? What, you mean the people you’re meant to kill, you—?”

Leliana raised an eyebrow, the twist at the edge of her lips a quietly knowing one. “Hm. But, if those stories were true, who would ever agree to entertain a bard in their court?”

“Oh, I don’t know….” Alistair sounded positively wistful, and mischief glittered in his face, under the streaks of mud. “There’s a certain allure to danger, isn’t there? And besides, you couldn’t all be assassins. I’d take my chances.”

Leliana raised both brows then, though she didn’t look at all surprised. “Oh, you would, would you?”

He grinned. “Well, if the stories were _true_ , that is….”

Daeon looked wide-eyed as a cat, his mouth already open to ask—if I knew alienage boys at all—exactly what was in those racy stories, how many of them there were, and if you could buy them on a penny song-sheet, but I didn’t want to hear the rest of the conversation.

Given that I had pushed him away so hard, I knew I had little right to feel affronted by Alistair’s playfulness… if that was what it was, and not outright flirtation. I wasn’t sure I could tell; maybe I was too guarded, too quick to find a sting of jealousy to clasp tight and wound myself on. He was still grinning, though, and Leliana was shaking her head and smiling wearily, and I couldn’t help that pulsing little thought at the back of my mind that said—as it had said so often before—that she was a better match for him than I could ever dream of being.

I kept trudging forwards in any case, staying out of the conversation and giving myself a good, hard mental kick for thinking those things. It was stupid of me, just as it was stupid to feel annoyed at the idea Alistair might enjoy flirting with her, or that he might be drawn to those saucy tales, that “allure of danger”. My mind rebelled at that, because it wasn’t a taste I shared. We had spent so much time fighting, skirting death and bloodshed, and I was so tired. All I wanted was an end to the mud and the weariness and the bone-aching difficulty of the task before us. I could see nothing exotic or appealing in danger, or in the masques and velvet-draped assassin-whores of the raunchier Orlesian stories. I didn’t want him to see it, either. I wanted him to see _me_ , and to see past the things I’d said to him… and then, as my thoughts boiled sullenly over themselves, I started to feel guilty for letting myself tar Leliana in such a way, even inside my own head. Who was I to judge her, or him, or anyone? 

I frowned, as if I could squeeze the thoughts out between the wrinkles growing on my brow, and glanced sidelong at my companions.

Leliana snorted dismissively. “Really! We had rules about that sort of thing, Alistair. Strict rules.”

“Oh?” He sounded hopeful, still grinning genially. “Such as…?”

She shook her head. “Nope.”

Daeon leaned past her. “She’s not gonna tell us. You’re not, are you?”

Leliana smiled politely, fixing her gaze on the trees ahead. “Let’s just say I had plenty of reasons to join the Chantry, shall we? And leave it at that.”

“Spoilsport,” Alistair muttered.

At the edge of the group, Revasir snorted and said something quietly in Elvish to Aegan. I didn’t hear what it was, but I guessed it was something noncomplimentary about shems, and I glumly resigned myself to feeling offended on Alistair’s behalf, even though I knew _that_ was just as stupid as my fits of jealousy and resentment.

I did not, I decided, care for this romance business. In fact, I liked it even less than leadership.

**_~o~O~o~_ **

We kept on for what felt like hours, Morrigan seeking out a path from above and leading us on a scramble across brooks and banks that caused plenty of thorn scratches, banged elbows, and wrenched ankles. Sten observed aridly that we did not seem to be making any more effective headway than we had done wandering pointlessly in circles, but at least we were seeing some different parts of the forest.

Anyway, despite the rock-bottom morale and navigational concerns, I was convinced we _were_ pressing deeper into the forest’s heart… not that this was necessarily a good thing. The mist Wynne had voiced such suspicion of kept growing thicker, slinking along the ground like a permanent companion. I wouldn’t have said it aloud, but—whatever finding Witherfang would or would not mean for us and the Dalish clan—I was already sure we weren’t ever coming out from among the trees again.

Morrigan tired, unable to hold her form any longer, and we took a short rest break in a mossy, dank gully that smelled of brackish rainwater and rotting leaves.

“We’re starting to run low on supplies,” Alistair announced, glumly passing around the canteen.

Aegan—chewing on a piece of that ghastly Dalish deer jerky—pulled a sneering face. “It should never have taken this long. Too many days. Clan sickens, people dying… we are still going in circles.”

From his position leaning against the flaking bark of an ancient fir, Revasir shrugged with surprisingly nonchalance. “We are nearer the centre of the forest. You can feel it.”

“I didn’t say we weren’t making progress,” Alistair said stiffly, and the undisguised annoyance on his face told me he was too tired to make an effort at diplomacy. “Just—”

Aegan cast a dismissive glance in his direction, and cut him off with a terse phrase in Elvish directed at Revasir. He replied, and the two hunters’ sharp discussion began to rise into something that sounded like an argument. Alistair scowled, swore under his breath—not very subtly—and, rising to his feet, stomped off to the far end of the gully. 

Leliana, sitting on her pack, looking pale and sore, started to say something conciliatory, at which Morrigan snapped with a snide comment about “insipid do-goodery”.

“I think we should all calm down,” Wynne suggested, in the dry, hard tone of voice that made plain she herself—for all her usual composure—was far from calm. “We’re all tired, but this is not helping. Why don’t—”

“Why don’t you bite your tongue, old woman?” Morrigan sneered. The day was growing thin, the dimming light casting shadows across her paint-darkened face, and her eyes seemed to burn yellow in the dimness. “You and I both know the nature of this place. ‘Calm’ will keep no one alive.”

Daeon, left out of the Dalish bickering and caught between the two rapidly fracturing groups, glanced nervously towards me. “What does she mean by that?”

I had no wish to be pulled into anything, but I did catch myself glaring accusingly at the witch. Did she know more of the forest than she was letting on, or did she just feel the extent of its power? When I looked into her eyes, I had my answer, and it terrified me.

Morrigan was afraid.

I blinked, and she turned her head away, scowling into the bushes. I held the breath in my lungs, forcing myself to form a reply for Daeon… forcing myself to try and do what I’d been doing for so long: to keep everyone together, and keep us pushing on. I wasn’t sure I could do it anymore. More than that, I was beginning to truly believe I _couldn’t_.

“I think we can all agree this place is twisted,” I said, eyeing the disparate, angry people around me. “I don’t know if it’s the Veil being thin, whether it’s the forest itself, the things that have happened here, or something else. But I do know we need to keep together. We’ve come this far, and there’s no sense in tearing each other to bits now. Let’s… let’s take another few moments, get our breath, then we’ll move on and see if we can get a little farther before dusk.”

The jaded, irritated faces that looked back at me were not those of a group of comrades, eager to unite beneath a commander they trusted. In that moment, I was convinced that almost every one of them would cheerfully have throttled me and left my body to rot in the leaf litter.

Farriel scoffed, though the sharp look Zevran gave him wiped a little of the open defiance from his face. He still clearly thought I was a fool, though I doubted he was any older or wiser than I was.

“If we can still see by then,” he said in his oddly accented Common, kicking at the brush for emphasis. “This mist… it thickens. Not natural, like the woman says.”

Wynne inclined her head, her mouth drawn tight. “The Dalish stories of the forest protecting itself may have truth in them,” she acknowledged. “I don’t know, perhaps some form of barrier is at work.”

“We’d see that, wouldn’t we?” Alistair asked, frowning suspiciously at the trees. “I mean, it would have to be obvious. Something… tangible. A magical barrier isn’t exactly easy to maintain. It’s big, and complicated, and—”

“So is the forest,” Morrigan said darkly, “and I imagine it has more brains than you.”

“Oh, shut—”

“For once,” she continued, drowning out Alistair’s snappish retort, “I agree with Wynne. It is an old kind of magic… magic that weaves confusion in the mind.” She shook her head, as if she was annoyed with herself, her lips pressed tightly together, and I could see tendrils of her carefully arranged hair falling down to brush her cheeks. “I should have known. ’Tis not an uncommon magic, though ’tis rarely used, perhaps. I felt it when I flew above the trees. Up there, I was freer. I could still not see far, and hardly at all through the forest itself, but down here— When I returned, I knew. Down here, the trees whisper among themselves. They feel our presence, and they do not like it.”

Silence pooled thickly in the clearing as her words hung in the air, and there was a general shuffling of feet and consternated discomfort. I would like to say I didn’t feel a shiver run down my back, but that would be a lie. My spine might as well have been ice, and every knothole in every trunk I glanced at was suddenly an evil eye.

Alistair cleared his throat loudly. “Great. Well, thanks for mentioning that. I don’t sleep that well anyway, so—”

“What would you have had me say?” Morrigan demanded, rounding on him with her lip curled. “It changes nothing! Flemeth may have used similar charms to keep our hut from the prying eyes of templars, but—”

“Oh, so you’re _familiar_ with this, then?” His voice rose, and anger thundered in his face. “And you couldn’t just _say_ something? Of course not! That would have been far too bloody convenient!”

“There will still be a barrier!” she snarled. “And we have no way to cross it, no way to undo the charm unless we can find the source!”

The air almost crackled with the frustration and fury it held. I could feel the fight that wanted to break out pressing against my skin—everybody, just ready to sink into rage and vituperative hate—and I didn’t know how to hold them back anymore. Maethor began to bark, and I thought it was the raised voices that had unsettled him, but I was wrong.

I was halfway across the gully, trying to make myself heard over Alistair and Morrigan’s spatting, Leliana weighing in to calm them both, Sten grumbling about undisciplined chaos, and the Dalish taking loud offence at everything.  Between that and the mabari barks, it was no wonder I didn’t hear the movement in the trees.

It was Farriel who raised the alarm—his cry of “Wolf!” brought the argument to a crashing halt, and we splintered from each other, rage at once curdling to panic as we looked for the onslaught of the beasts.

At first I saw nothing, heard nothing… then the flicker of movement, the stirring of feet on uneven ground. Maethor lunged forwards, growling, but he held back, uncertain. Revasir had dropped to a crouch, his blade drawn before I’d even brought a hand to my dagger, and he held up one finger, glancing back at me with confusion in his face.

I frowned. I didn’t understand it, either. Only one of them? Unless this was a scout or a straggler of some kind, it was odd. The beasts hunted in packs. Was this a trick of some kind, an ambush?

Steel rang behind me—a song of drawn swords and readied stances. Ahead, the brush cracked, and something stumbled through the trees.

Maethor loosed a low, warning growl just as the beast came lumbering through the undergrowth… but it was no planned attack. What appeared before us was a wounded creature, doubled over, stumbling and bloody. It barely seemed to see us as it half-fell, half-crawled between the trees.

I moved too. Moved towards it, though all reason should have told me not to.

“Wait,” I said, pushing past Revasir as he raised his weapon.

He shot me a look of violent disapproval, but stayed his hand… as did the others. If I’d been paying attention to that fact, I might have better believed that my friends still trusted me. As it was, I was thinking only of the fact that—at that precise moment—we had within our reach a werebeast that was vulnerable, and which might just yield answers to our questions.

“Be careful,” Alistair warned as I drew close to the creature. I nodded… not that I was really going to be.

The creature had stilled, a hunched and stinking pile of fur at the edge of the gully, its head down and its breathing ragged. The smell of wet fur and old blood rose off it with all the thick, vile, cloying sweetness of decay.

Everything seemed very quiet. The sounds of the trees, the heartbeat of the forest… everything slowed and grew still, and all I knew was the taut, desperate breaths of the wolf. Even bowed on the ground, it was a huge creature. Far bigger than me. The twisted curve of its back, matted hair over bunched muscles, gave way to those attenuated limbs that seemed so long and loose, and yet were capable of such immense power.

I drew my sword, preferring a little more blade between me and the beast than a dagger afforded, but I held it softly at my side.

“What do you want?” I asked, addressing the beast, though why I felt the need to practically shout the words, the Maker alone knew. Even then, my voice still wobbled. “Where are the rest?”

Behind me, Farriel and Aegan both voiced the opinion that we should just kill the thing, that this was some kind of trick. Swiftrunner and his kin—beasts that could speak, reason, and try to convince us to see things from their point of view—had obviously made no impression on them. I should have marvelled at how deeply Zathrian’s teaching of hatred was ingrained in his clan.

The werewolf lifted its head and, when it looked up at me, I caught my breath. I saw, not beast’s eyes, and not the wild, intelligent stare of the weres we’d encountered before, but a look of utter hopelessness, of agony and despair. Staring, bloodshot eyes, sunken into a twisted and malformed head, matted with fur and mud… and yet they seemed familiar, like the eyes of an elf or a man; something that walked on two legs, and didn’t kill with curved teeth and claws.

They were eyes that knew remorse, and fear.

“ _H…helllp_ ,” it croaked, the sound mangled but its meaning clearly distinguishable. “Please… _hrr_ … help me….”

The words were punctuated with horrible, growling breaths; I couldn’t tell whether it was the creature fighting its nature and resisting the urge to attack, or whether it was suffering so badly as to make speech nearly impossible. I couldn’t see any obvious wounds on its body, though it was still hunched before me. My grip shifted on the hilt of my sword, but it was hard to stand firm with those searing eyes boring into me, begging for help.

“Please… _hrr_ … listen!” the creature entreated, reaching out one clawed, paw-like hand that scrabbled in the brush, scratching against the toe of my boot. “I-I am not the mindless beast I appear to be.”

I tried to step back, repulsed and a little frightened by its touch. It didn’t look quite like the other weres we’d seen. Its skin seemed pitted, the fur growing jaggedly, as if over scars, and the way it held its limbs suggested a terrible pain and stiffness in their joints.

“What happened to you?” I asked, my curiosity overwhelming my logic.

The creature bared its teeth. They were white, clean… not the jaws of a beast born to rending flesh and cracking bone. It seemed disgusted, though I couldn’t tell whether my question or its own predicament had caused the offence. It shook its head, claws again pawing at my boot.

“Careful,” Alistair said, starting forwards, his sword half-drawn.

He stopped as I raised my hand, but he didn’t move back. Maethor was moving to my other side, stiff-legged with his hackles up all the way from his neck to his tail, no sound coming from between his slightly parted jaws.

“They… the curse. I— _hrr_ … I am cursed, turned into this creature!” A low growl swallowed the end of the words, and the werewolf lowered its head mournfully. “The curse… _hrr_ … it burns in me. Always burning. I fled into the forest. The werewolves took me in, but… _hrr…_ I cannot—”

It growled again, lips pulled back over white teeth and bloody gums, its whole twisted form apparently racked with pain. When its bloodshot eyes rolled around to fix on me once more, the creature saw the hunters behind me, and it gave a softer, rumbling growl, low in its throat.

“ _Hrr…_ am I home? Am I back… _hrr_ … with the clan? I… I wanted… _hrr_ … to return. To… to die with you.”

“You are— _were_ Dalish?” Revasir demanded, moving closer to the beast. “The others? They are as you now?”

I glared at him; those weren’t the questions we needed to ask. Although, had I been in his place, what would I not have given to believe my kin still had some of their minds intact, instead of having the whole of themselves consumed by the curse. Even like this, even in pain and malformed agony, they would still be kin… wouldn’t they?

I didn’t dare look behind me to see if Leliana was watching this grim picture. It chilled my blood to think that, if we didn’t find a way out of this mess soon, she would become as this matted, snarling thing: an unidentifiable mass of flesh and corruption.

The beast’s gaze rolled up to me again, its muzzle twitching, and its ragged ears flicked forward as recognition seemed to pass across its face.

“You… _hrr_ … not Dalish. Elf, but not… _hrr_ … Yet, you have his scent.”

One huge clawed, paw-like hand rose to scratch at my hip, and my first reflex was to pull back—until I realised what the creature wanted.

“Wait!” I said quickly, trying to calm the tension that sprang from that movement. Both Alistair and the Dalish had pressed forwards, ready to draw on the creature, and Maethor gave a sharp snarl that the werewolf responded to—a spittle-flecked growl that it barely seemed aware of, like two street dogs snapping over a bone.

I knew then what I was looking at. _Who_. Horror poured through me liked iced water, filling me up until it flowed over the outside of my skin, leaving me numb. My fingers fumbled as I pulled the intricately embroidered scarf Athras had given me from my scrip.

“You’re Danyla,” I said, holding the fabric out to the beast. “Aren’t you? Athras’s wife?”

It— _she_ —growled softly and snatched the scarf from me with surprising grace and gentleness. She held it to her muzzle, drawing deeply on the scent. I heard Revasir muttering under his breath in Elvish, but I couldn’t tell whether it was a string of swear words or an invocation to the gods.

“Athras asked me to find you,” I said, struggling to keep my voice calm. “He gave me the scarf. He said he found it outside his aravel. I think you left it there for him. Is that what happened?”

Her eyes seemed to grow clearer for a moment, a glimmer of something soft breaking through the pain. “Yes. _Hrr_ … yes.” The scarf wilted like a stained petal in her claws. “I wanted… _hrr_ … wanted him to know— Zathrian did not speak truth.”

The words dissolved into bestial grunts again as she pitched forwards, snarling, her snout buried in the cloth and the muscles of her back rippling. It was like watching the flesh boil. I was terrified to think that the creatures’ mutations were all like this… but were they, or had Danyla’s gone so badly wrong? I thought of the men who’d taken the Joining with me, of Daveth lying contorted on the ancient stones of Ostagar’s ruined temple.

Revasir and Aegan jostled at my sides, demanding more from Danyla; what did she mean to say such things of the Keeper, where were the other wolves, what healing or magic could help her? I wanted to shout them into silence, knowing this pressure wouldn’t help her, but she pushed back first, lunging and snapping at her clanmates in a fury of spittle and growling.

In her face, twisted as it was by the curse, I saw Dalish pride and wildness. The dark, coarse fur matted along her muzzle might as well have been vallaslin, tracing vines and whorls around her bloodshot eyes.

She reared up on her haunches as if threatening to attack and, for the first time, I saw the wounds on her belly and sides. Great black-lipped gashes marked the flesh, blood darkening the hair. Teeth and claws had torn at her—but what would make the werewolves turn on one of their own? If they were truly not the animals Zathrian said they were, if they truly had reclaimed their minds from the curse, what had happened to Danyla, and what else was there we didn’t know?

She snarled, half-falling and half-lunging forwards, grabbing my arm roughly and dragging me closer to her face. Her breath, hot and sour, panted against my skin. I was intensely aware of her claws digging into my leathers… and of the teeth to which I was so very close.

“ _Hrr_ … you… _hrr_ … listen, outsider,” she growled, glaring steadily at me, the words bubbling from her throat in ever threadier strings. “Zathrian… _hrr_ … he has told you… of Witherfang?”

I nodded. She barely waited for my response, pulling her lips back farther over her fangs.

“ _Hrr_ … I know why. But… _hrr_ … no time to explain. You… _hrr_ … you must do something for me, outsider. Take… _hrr_ … a message to Athras. Tell him… _hrr…_ tell him I love him. That I am… with the gods now.”

I thought I was beginning to understand. Danyla had hoped for so much more. Slinking around the camp, leaving messages for her husband—she must have believed, once it became clear that the curse was not quite what Zathrian claimed, there was hope. I just wished I knew what had happened to destroy that.

“Danyla!” Aegan protested, speaking rapidly to her in Elvish.

I took the words to mean his disbelief; she wasn’t dead, and it was wrong to lie to her mate. 

Danyla growled, her ragged ears flattened to her skull. “No! I will be, soon enough. Too late. I just… _hrr_ … I want him to be at peace.”

She turned her gaze back to me, and I couldn’t have refused her even if I’d wanted to. “All right.” I nodded brusquely. “Fine. But listen, we need answers. You need to tell us where the others are, the other werew—”

“One more thing. End my pain… _hrr_ … I will tell you… what you ask, but… _hrr_ … you must promise. _Hrr_ … end… this.”

A horrible realisation slipped over me, as cold and dank as the mist. I shifted my grip on the hilt of my sword. I’d never killed anyone who’d asked me to; never killed anyone with whom I’d had so coherent a conversation, either. Nausea roiled in my gut, and I swallowed hard.

“All right.”

My voice was quiet, but there seemed to be such a heavy silence in the gully that it fell like a shout. Danyla growled softly, lowering her head. Her claws relaxed a fraction on my arm before tensing again, and her lips peeled back over those long, shiny teeth.

“Then… _hrr_ … know this. There is… _hrr_ … a ruin… in the centre of the forest. The lair is there… beneath the ground. You will find… Witherfang. _Hrr…_ the others will be there… they will… _hrr_ … they will think you mean to kill them….”

“Don’t we?” Alistair asked quietly. I heard Wynne shush him.

A grunt of pain broke through Danyla’s laboured breathing and she snarled, her grip tightening with painful suddenness on my arm. I grabbed a handful of her dank fur and shook hard, trying to tug her back to me.

“How do we get there? To the ruins? How do we get past this mist?”

“The… _hrr_ … the tree,” she managed as the focus began to slip from her eyes. “ _Hrr_ … her enchantment begins there. Please… do as you promised. End it… end it now….”

“Wait! What tree? What—?”

“Danyla!” Revasir reached past me, taking hold of the scruff at her neck and trying to heave her head up. He spoke to her in rapid Elvish, his hands knotted in the matts of hair on her twisted cheeks.

At first she seemed to respond, and a few Elvish words escaped her, mixed into those horrible snarls.

“Tell her it doesn’t have to be like this,” I told him. “Tell her we’ll find the cure, we can take her back to the camp… back to Athras. We could—”

“No!” Danyla growled, digging her claws deeper into my arm. “No… _hrr_ … he must not see me like this!

Revasir was shouting desperately at her in Elvish, and Aegan pushed me aside, both hunters trying to communicate with her and yet managing only to aggravate the situation. Her claws tore at my bracer as I stumbled backwards, and just before I managed to save myself from tumbling backside-first into the mud, I saw Danyla rear up again, lunging and snarling.

Alistair raised his sword, ready to lunge, not that he had a clear shot at her, and I thought at least one of the two Dalish would be bitten. There was a tangle of movement and anger… and then Danyla was suddenly still, her snarls abruptly ceasing as shocked silence overtook the hunters.

Zevran had moved behind her and buried a dagger deeply in her back. It was the quietest, cleanest, subtlest kill I’d ever seen—and the first time I’d witnessed him strike without warning. The look on his face was one of detached concentration, but for the hard curve to his mouth. There was something about that which spoke of a kind of enjoyment, a relishing of the power he had to end a life so succinctly, and with such ease. His eyes were as flat as coins, and he pulled the blade out quickly once he was sure of its work, wiping it on the muddied fur of Danyla’s shoulder as her corpse folded heavily to the ground.

Revasir and Aegan stared at him in horror, but Zev merely shrugged impassively, the Dalish braids Farriel had wound in his hair falling softly around his face.

“What? You don’t think it was a mercy?”

Logic said it was. We could have done nothing for her, not with her wounds, and whatever chaos the curse had wrought in her blood. No magic could have healed her, and who knew how long she would have had to wait for us to find Witherfang and bring an end to this whole mess.

Still… if anyone had done it, I was sure it should have been me. I could still see those crazed and yet so very intelligent eyes staring into mine, and still feel her breath on my face.

I could have done it. I _should_ have done it. I shouldn’t have let myself be pushed aside again. But I was so very glad I had been.

Zevran’s words were not soothing the hunters. Revasir swore at him, and drew his blade. Farriel—white-faced and wide-eyed, but either remarkably loyal or remarkably stupid—darted between them, and an argument broke out in Elvish far too quick and fractured for me to understand.

“Enough!” I stomped irritably past the menfolk, inserting myself between the body of Danyla and elf who had ended her. “What’s done is done. Would you rather she’d attacked you and forced you to hack her to pieces?”

Revasir and Aegan both glared at me, something very near hatred burning behind their vallaslin. For all I knew, such a death was more honourable to the Dalish than the quick, easy end that Zevran had provided. Equally, it was just as probable that whatever I said would make me a target for their ire. I was, as she had called me, “outsider”. Elf, but not clan. Not _elvhen_. And I never would be.

I nodded at the body. “She’s told us something worth knowing. ‘The tree’. ‘Enchantment begins there’. Do you know what that could mean?”

The hunters gave me sullen looks. I sighed.

“All right. Make whatever rites you need to for her, then we move out. We’ll try to find this… tree,” I muttered lamely, sending a forlorn glance towards the others and wishing someone would back me up.

Looking for a tree in the middle of a forest. Maker! If Duncan could have heard me, I was sure he’d have been sorry he ever saved me from the gallows.

I caught Zevran’s eye as I turned back to the Dalish, and gave him a small nod of thanks, which he returned with that elegant inclination of his head, his eyes half-hooded and his mouth subtly tightened.

Perhaps I’d never really thought about it, or perhaps I’d been over-confident in our numbers… but, for the first time, I was fully aware of his skills, and I recognised just how easily he could have killed at least one or two of us before now, if he’d wanted. Alistair had had a point about that. 

At least, I told myself, I had a proof as solid as stone that I could trust in the loyalty of an assassin. And that in itself seemed to sum up the insanity that had become my life.

I smiled grimly to myself as I turned away.  


	16. Chapter 16

 

The Dalish didn’t take long to see to Danyla. There was a lament—a chant, or words that had to be recited for the ears of Falon’Din, and a prayer to his brother Dirthamen, the Keeper of Secrets, that he would hold back his ravens, Fear and Deceit, and prevent them from beating their wings in the face of the dead.

It was solemn, but tinged with a tightly restrained anger that I saw burning in the hunters’ faces. I understood it… the outrage at the indignity and pain suffered by one who should never have had to bear it. I kept thinking of Athras and—if we made it back to the camp in one piece—whether I could tell him how we’d found his wife, or how she’d died.

We helped them bury her in a shallow trench in the gully’s damp floor, like we’d buried the dead from the ill-fated ambush that brought Zevran into our ranks. I remembered that with strange vividness as Aegan and Revasir rolled Danyla’s body into the earth. When a pyre wasn’t possible, burial was the next best thing to leaving someone to rot or be eaten by animals, but it still seemed undignified to me. Of course, I wasn’t certain the Dalish _did_ burn their dead… they had specific burial rites we couldn’t perform for Danyla, but the hunters didn’t talk about them in detail and the whole procedure was, from my painful, outsider’s perspective, extremely awkward.

I thought of my mother, naturally, and her pauper’s funeral. Burned with strangers, the ashes interred in the sad, boggy field to the north of the city. The flames reflected in the tears on my father’s cheeks, the shifting pattern of light the only movement on his face as he turned so still and silent… silence that defined him for so long afterwards.

I wondered if, after Loghain had purged the alienage, there had been anyone left who cared enough to say words over the charred wreckage, and to do right by those who’d died. Would Mother Boann still go there with her sweet-smelling sisters, taking bread to the beggars and swapping lectures on loose morals for gifts of kindness? Perhaps. Perhaps, I reminded myself, some of my loved ones still lived. There was no way of knowing, but maybe I should have hoped for it.

Athras had hoped his wife lived, however… and Danyla had hoped to return to him somehow. I could see how that had turned out.

Zevran helped dig the hole, like he’d helped bury the people he’d paid to help him kill us. The Dalish didn’t seem offended by the gesture, though they didn’t seem to like our non-elven companions being close to the corpse. I’d all but given up trying to puzzle out their etiquette.

I took one last look at Danyla’s body before the earth started to go over her. Whatever evil the curse wrought, death did not end it—she was as grotesque and as changed dead as she had been alive—but, unmoving now, each malformation seemed more starkly obvious. Every twisted joint, every matted hank of fur through which strained, scarred skin showed, tendons taut and muscles stretched…. The agony of her changing seemed scribed into her body, and it frightened and sickened me.

Once the hasty burial was over, we needed to discuss which way we were heading, and what Danyla had tried to tell us might have meant.

I was grateful that things were at least ostensibly more civil than they had been, though the atmosphere could hardly have been worse without at least some of the party coming to blows.

“I’ll say one thing, though….” Alistair eyed the mound of fresh earth grimly, and glanced into the trees. “She can’t have got far in that state, and given we’re not exactly close to the camp anymore, she must have come _from_ wherever the rest of them are holed up… or at least close to them.”

“A fair assessment,” Zevran agreed, albeit with circumspection in his voice.

“Perhaps,” Aegan chimed in, unusually deigning to participate in direct communication with—as he viewed it—‘the shems’. “But it gets us no further beyond the mist, does it?”

Alistair scowled at him, evidently losing patience. “It was an observation. I _assumed_ you’d be able to track where she came from or something, or—”

Aegan kicked at the churned, bloody mud with the toe of his boot. “In this mess? Hmph. If you had not trampled everything, perhaps—”

“ _Hamin_!” Revasir snapped, prowling the edge of the brush, past the furrows and gouges the fight had made in the earth, to where a small bank fell away behind the trees. “I think… this way. There are signs she came through here, but the way is narrow, and the ground slopes hard.”

Maethor padded after him, wrinkled snout to the ground and stubby tail held as high and stiff as he could manage. He grumbled, low in his chest, and looked up at me, wagging his tail deliberately.

“All right,” I said doubtfully. “I suppose. If there’s no other way through. Maybe we should split into two groups? One scramble down there, the other take the gear and see if there’s an easier route?”

“It would be foolish to divide our strength,” Sten said, looking at me as if I’d suggested smothering ourselves in honey and kicking over a beehive.

“I agree,” Leliana said, and the kindly tone of her voice told me she both understood what I’d been trying to offer, and politely declined it. “We should stick together.”

She glanced meaningfully at Wynne, who nodded.

“Hmm? Oh… yes. Besides, I can’t speak for the rest of you, but I’m not decrepit yet.”

I smiled wearily. Wynne might have been indestructible, but I certainly didn’t feel nearly as spry. Still, there was no other option. We let the hunters take point, and set to scrambling down the bank, whipped by branches and scratched by thorns. The forest grew thicker here, old roots and ancient wood decaying in on itself, leavening the ground soft and damp with mouldering leaves, and treacherous underfoot.

For all my concerns about the wounded and elderly members of our party, I was the first to fall over, skidding in an undignified—and rather painful manner—on my backside until a sturdy tree trunk halted my progress.

“Ow! Bugger!”

“Are you all right?” Alistair asked, lending a hand to haul me up.

I nodded as he helped me to my feet, but the words I’d meant to say didn’t come out, and I was left to mumble brusquely, aware of the mud on my face and the bits of twig in my hair. He smiled—brief but warm, eyes brightening as he found humour in the state of me—and it was hard not to notice the ruddy glow of his skin, even past the streaks of mud and lichen smears.

In that moment, I missed him so badly, inasmuch as I’d ever had him, and yet there was no opportunity to dwell on it.

**_~o~O~o~_ **

We got to the bottom of the bank without too much incident. Leliana fell like I had, which meant stopping for Wynne to check her wounds and adjust the dressings, but no great damage was done. We found ourselves in a sparse, dimmer stretch of the forest, where the trees grew tall and strong… perhaps too evenly. My city eyes had no great feel for the cultivation of plants, but it seemed like a grove, as if ancient ranks of trees had been ordered here and then left to run wild, and nature had grown up through them, pulling them back to herself. Maybe this was an extension of the ruin Danyla had mentioned? An ancient garden or orchard, left to grow untamed?

I was quite pleased with my reasoning, but then I heard Revasir curse beside me.

“What?”

“Sylvans,” he said quietly, and spat on the ground, his gaze darting over the trees that surrounded us. “Here. Be on your guard. This… this is bad. Death is here. Do you not smell the breath of the Dread Wolf?”

“Death?” I echoed, as Maethor pressed himself against my leg, his head lowered and his spine tense. “You mean, from the wars? The Imperium and the barbarians, and—”

“Older than that, maybe,” Wynne whispered, cutting across before Revasir could answer, something faintly reverential in her tone. “There is ancient power here. I feel it… and the creatures that feed on it. I doubt we will escape their notice.”

She was right. We had barely moved a few feet into the grove before the trees rustled—dead leaves whispering like curses on the lips of madmen—and the first sylvan attacked.

We had the advantage of experience—we’d fought the things before, and the Dalish were more than familiar with their dangers—but that didn’t seem to count for much. In real and practical terms, it’s hard to describe the extent of terror that suffuses everything when the trees themselves are turning on you. The whole grove seemed alive; far greater numbers than we’d faced before.  I didn’t dare contemplate how many must have died in this place to render the Veil so thin and the trees so full of unquiet spirits and blinded demons.

The dank air was full of wood chippings, the sounds of yells and of splintering boughs, leaves cascading and dirt flying as we exploded into chaos. There was no room, our ragtag band struggling to keep from the sylvans’ reach yet trying to find space to strike, and the evenly spaced woodland seemed to give way to a living, writhing thicket, gnarled and twisted with hatred.

I drew my sword and hacked at whatever came close, flinging up an arm to protect myself as, ahead of me, Sten sent a huge branch crashing to the ground, amid a cascade of leaves and splinters. Alistair shouted a command—pushing on for the end of the grove, outrunning instead of outfighting the trees—and that seemed sensible. I was heading after him when a mobile branch caught me in the side and threw me a clear few feet across the earth, cannoning me into Aegan and Farriel. It felt like being hit by a tree trunk wrapped in thorns, and it occurred to me—as the world blurred together and my teeth rattled in my skull—that was effectively exactly what it was.

One of Wynne’s petrification spells whizzed over our heads, the impact of rock on wood sending a scatter of pebbles, debris and leaves raining down on us, and I was fairly sure I heard Farriel curse my ineptitude in surprisingly fluent Common.

Scowling, I got to my feet and did the best I could to run for the far end of the grove without getting myself killed. Heroes were for another time.

“Run!” Alistair bellowed, standing to the far edge of the trees, his shield held high to deflect debris as he counted us through the end of the grove.

For once, no one was arguing with him. We took prudence as the better part of valour and made a mad dash for safety, Sten and Morrigan bringing up the rear with a few last parting shots at the clawing boughs.

We pushed through the brush, and found ourselves in another dingy, pathless piece of forest, surrounded by trees and the constant crawl of ivy.

The roaring of the sylvans’ outrage quieted, the creaks and rustles of the trees fading away as they became still and dormant once more, and a thick silence settled over the forest. I would never, ever look at a tree again without thinking it had the capacity to come to life; it added a whole new terror to the outdoors for me.

I was bent over, still trying to catch my breath, and when I straightened up I glanced around at the others, making sure we were all unhurt. No one seemed too much the worse for wear, excepting a few cuts and scrapes… but Wynne was standing perfectly still, staring ahead of her, and I could see Morrigan following her gaze.

Both mages were staring at a vast oak tree that rose ahead of us—taller and older-looking than most of the other trees, wreathed with shaggy ropes of climbing plants and with bulging knots in its bark.

“What’s the—?” I began, barely able to form my question before a disconcerting creaking sound eased through the air, and the immense tree began to move.

Dead leaves shook from its twisted branches, falling around us like confetti. My stomach dropped, and I heard Alistair swear. This couldn’t possibly be good. I looked desperately to either side of us, hoping to find an escape route—even running blindly through the trees was better than being caught between the grove at our backs and this monster—but it was hard to see anywhere that might offer a chance.

I drew my sword… and the tree spoke. 

Nothing could have prepared me for that. No matter the impossibilities, horrors and outright insanities I had seen since my Joining—the nightmares, the demons, the darkspawn, the terrible things that magic could do when it was wielded for ill—I’d never encountered anything like this.

The voice was deep, slow; each word formed like the movement of some natural fall of rock or earth, shifting the way forest itself did. It seemed to come from all around us, a great throbbing, creaking, sawing sound that hummed through the air and the dirt and the trees. I felt it more than heard it… felt it swell up in my arms and legs, burning under my skin and pounding in my head.

_“Hmmmm….”_

The great oak tree’s branches swayed above us, swooping down in a slow arc, almost as if it was making a bow. My heart beat fast and hard. If the sylvans we’d fought before were demons, what manner of demon was this? Surely one of even greater power… and that was a monster I feared we couldn’t defeat.

_“…what manner of beast be thee, that comes before this elder tree?”_

I looked frantically towards Wynne, Morrigan, and even the Dalish, as if any of them might have answers, or some idea what we should do. We couldn’t go back, and passing by this creature didn’t look possible, so what were we supposed to do… engage it in conversation?

None of them gave me a hint. The hunters were readying themselves, dropping to fighting stances with their hands on their blades, and Morrigan had her staff clutched tightly in front of her. Wynne looked back at me, a curious blend of wonder and uncertain fear on her face.

I mugged at her, wanting someone to tell me what I should do, but before she could answer me the tree let out another long sigh that crooned through the forest floor, its branches rustling softly. Great braids of moss hung from it, plaques of lichen scaling its bark. The air smelled strongly of leaf mould and stagnant decay, but also the sweet richness of earth and, as my feet seemed to sink into the mud and brush, I don’t think I’d ever missed the city so much in my life.

“Elf,” I said, perhaps a little querulously, forcing myself to step forwards and bending slightly to see if the creature had any kind of feature to it.

I don’t know what I expected: some hideous, twisted face, like the burned-out marks of agony on a rage demon, or knots and wheals in the tree’s bark that I could make-believe were eyes and a mouth.

I saw nothing. Just the vastness of the tree, which seemed to spread its bulk all around the clearing.

“I-I’m an elf,” I repeated when there was no response, moving carefully foot-over-foot to see where the way past this thing might lie. “So are some of my friends, and—”

The sound erupted again, a long sighing groan followed by that strange voice that seemed to swell out of the ground… out of the air itself.

_“Hmmmm… ah, yes, I remember thee. Long ago, the elves roamed free, their numbers few and passing fast, until one eve we saw their last.”_

A branch moved slowly but forcefully in front of me, cutting off my path. I stopped, surprised that neither the tree’s motion nor its voice seemed to hold any real threat.

It hadn’t attacked us blindly like the other sylvans, and if anything it seemed somehow… gentle. The madness of that was perfectly apparent to me, and I stared blankly at the twisted, weathered branch in front of my face.

Behind me, Zevran breathed a soft curse in Antivan. I could hear Aegan and Revasir both murmuring what sounded like prayers to the gods, and I wished I had their faith. The comfort of the Chant seemed suddenly very distant to me… and what was that about elves? I turned, looking up at the immense breath of the tree, as its voice hummed through me once more.

_“Allow me a moment to welcome thee. I am called the Grand Oak, sometimes the Elder Tree.”_

It was… welcoming us. Well, that was unexpected. And it gave itself a name, an identity. I turned back to the others, shaking my head in confusion. The Dalish were still tense, ready to draw their blades… except for Farriel; Zevran had placed a hand on his arm, his amber gaze fixed on the tree, alert but still. Morrigan seemed to have relaxed a little, and Wynne was staring up in wonder at the tree.

“The world is certainly full of marvellous, unexpected creations,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “Each day we see something that we never thought possible!”

She said that as if she thought it was a good thing.

Alistair looked at me with his brows raised, and shrugged, indicating that—as long as this thing wasn’t actively trying to kill us—we should probably play along. Behind him, Sten was a massive and immovable block of barely concealed disgust. His face was thunderous, white brows drawn low over his glimmering eyes in open disapproval of yet more magic.

Leliana was just looking at the thing as if it was the best story she had to yet to tell, though she was painfully pale, a sheen of sweat glistening on her forehead. Danyla’s words ran through my head— _the tree… her enchantment begins there_ —and I hoped fervently that, whatever this so-called Grand Oak was, it might be our key to finding out how to find the wolves’ lair, though Maker alone knew how, or why… or whether we could trust it.

Morrigan stabbed her iron staff into the dirt, rustling the dead leaves. “I am no elf, spirit, but I would know what you are.”

Her voice rang out clear and strong, reminding me of the haughty, mysterious woman I’d first met in the Wilds. Now, I knew her—if not well—then at least enough to know that much of the hardness and arrogance in her tone was there to cloak uncertainty and, in this instance, a hungry curiosity. 

I should have known how deeply she was drawn to power.

The tree’s voice rumbled through the earth, spilling up in a great long groan.

_“Hmmm… I am an elder oak and nothing more, though once I dreamt of a time before, when I roamed the world and howled with pain, not of this world, but twixt and twain._

_“Perhaps I was a spirit then? A wandering thing drawn to this glen? But then that spirit joined with a tree; since then, a tree is all I be.”_

“Oh?” The witch snorted, as if this answer merely amused her. “Merely a tree? _That_ , I doubt. You are not like the others of your kind.”

_“Hmmmm… There are many just as I, but mad they are, I shall not lie. A spirit trapped within a tree, no mouth to scream or eyes to see. A cage of bark, a prison wood… a thing of rage where nature stood. So twisted sylvan they become, but I am not the same as some. I accept my fated oaken home, I feel no need to rage and roam.”_

“Hmph,” Morrigan muttered, eyeing the Grand Oak with a look somewhere between suspicion and greed.

Beside me, Maethor was stock-still and silent, his body tense and his head lowered, his wrinkled snout twitching busily. I wondered what he could smell… whether demons had a scent to them, or if that was what this creature was at all. The line between demon and spirit had become so far blurred for me that—without the education of the Circle, or the warnings of the Chantry ringing in my ears—I was starting to wonder whether anything but an amorphous mass of twisted life lay beyond the Veil, threshing in a pit of untrammelled energy not unlike the seething masses of darkspawn that haunted my dreams.

Alistair leaned forwards, trying to attract Morrigan’s attention with a too-loud whisper. “ _Psst…_ Why is it speaking in rhymes?”

She ignored him, but the Grand Oak did not.

_“Hmmm… I do not know. Why doest thou not? Thy words seem plain, a mundane lot. Perhaps a poet’s soul’s in me… dost that make me a poet tree?”_

Maker’s breath. I’d never heard of a demon with a sense of humour before. Zevran groaned quietly, as if physically pained, and I heard Alistair give an amused snort.

“Poet _tree_ …. Hah! I get it. Heh, that’s good….”

The branches around us creaked again, and a sigh seemed to rustle through the leaves, almost as if the Grand Oak was pleased, basking in approval. I shook my head incredulously, slightly dizzied by the turn our endless trek through the forest had taken.

_“Hmmmm… It was but a simple jest, a jibe to entertain my guest.”_

I glanced at my companions. Alistair had relaxed considerably—apparently he was of the opinion that anything that cracked awful jokes couldn’t be all bad—though Morrigan looked stony faced, and the Dalish remained tense, even in the face of the rhyming.

My head ached. For days—or had it been weeks now? Maybe longer?—I’d felt so lost in the seas of green and brown, the repetitive swathes of mud and leaf mould, the wet that dripped from the pine needles, and the unbroken lattice of the canopy above us. Everything had been pressing in upon me, crushing the thoughts out of my head and the life out of my chest, and now I wasn’t sure I was still sane.

Sentient trees that made terrible puns weren’t helping.

Aegan and Revasir had started conversing urgently in hushed Elvish. After a moment, Aegan pushed Revasir forward, nudging his elbow into his back. Revasir glared at him, but then squared his shoulders and began to address the tree, partly in Elvish, and partly in his halting, accented Common. 

“ _Atish’an, adahlen’ahren._ ” He bowed stiffly, his wild hair falling against his shoulders, and looked up cautiously at the tree. “We are _elvhen_ , Clan Vareth’in. We seek to know of this place.”

The trees’ branches creaked, and a few dry leaves twirled to the soft ground.

_“Hmmm… I can only speak to what a tree may see. It may not help you, but it is enough for me.”_

Revasir looked uncertain—not that it was easy to see beneath the dark lines of his vallaslin—but he pushed on.

“ _Adahlen’ahren…_ You spoke of elves that lived here. Long ago. Is this true?”

I watched carefully, and listened harder, holding my breath. It must have meant Dalish, surely. There had been Dalish in these woods for years, but… back then? The possibilities—the stories of Arlathan and the old ways—seemed unreal.

_“Hmmm… It was the elves who planted the seeds, raised the forest, saw to its needs. But that was all… so long ago. That they are dead is all I know.”_

“The war?” Revasir demanded, for a moment forgetting that stiff Dalish language of respect. “The shemlen?”

A breeze seemed to move through the tree, stirring its twigs and leaves. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have said it was sighing.

_“Hmmmm… A great war perhaps. I cannot tell. I was not here when it befell. But many deaths here, all the same, and with the deaths the spirits came. The spirits entered corpse and tree and most went mad, as thou canst see._

_“The forest had a spirit of its own, from back when its first seeds were sown. Perhaps she died of grief that day, or perhaps she simply went away. Or perhaps the were are the ones to blame, for the day she left is the day they came.”_

The hunter looked to his kin, and they muttered among themselves. I frowned, caught on those words of spirits. The forest’s spirit? Was that the ‘she’ the tree meant? The ‘she’ Danyla had spoken of? Then, the werewolves had somehow unbalanced the place… they were driving this rot and corruption. Maybe their curse was tied to the old Tevinter magic, or the thinning of the Veil that drove the sylvans’ spirits mad.

I had the horrible feeling that, whatever was wrong with this place, it would affect everything that stayed here too long, and I was sure it was only a matter of time before we were all tarnished by it. 

There was nothing else for it; we had to find Witherfang, and get out of here.

“Please,” I began, finding my voice, even though I knew how uncertain I sounded. “Please, Elder… Tree…?” Even saying the words didn’t make them feel real; I didn’t know where to look when I addressed the damn thing, either. Its presence, if that was what I could feel prickling at me in this place, was everywhere. “We need help. We’re trying to get to the centre of the forest, but we can’t find the way.”

I wasn’t sure whether it was wise to mention _why_ we needed to get there. If the same enchantments or old magics that gave the trees this strange, second-hand life were what the werewolves depended on for their secrecy, we shouldn’t give away our intent. Not to mention that, whatever power or old rites fed into the wellspring of power the forest had, I didn’t trust it at all.

The tree appeared to think for a moment… or such was the only way I could describe it. Heavy quiet, filled with stagnancy and the rustle of leaves. 

_“Hmmm… Most of what was is overgrown, leaving only broken stone. Perhaps some ruins remain free of rot. I know not where: I see them not. Yet in the forest’s centre the weres do dwell, or so go the tales my fellows tell. But they cannot be followed there; the forest doth protect the weres.”_

I grimaced. This didn’t sound promising.

“Great,” Alistair muttered. “So, the forest _is_ alive… but it’s not on our side.”

Leliana shushed him, still looking at the tree as if it was a miraculous example of the Maker’s will. Perhaps it was, although if that was the case, I suspected He had a deeply unkind sense of humour.

“Is there any way we can reach the centre of the forest?” I asked, appealing to the array of branches that surrounded us. “Can’t we—I don’t know—fool the trees somehow, or…?”

I had no idea what I was asking. If the Grand Oak could have laughed at me, I was sure it probably would have done.

Instead, the tree was silent for a few moments, as if deep in thought. I cast uncertain looks at my companions but, finally, the Oak’s voice rumbled through the clearing once more, humming in my head like the grumble of thunder preceding a storm.

_“Hmmm… Perform the boon as I ask, and I shall reward thee for the task.”_

“You’re saying you’ll help us?”

I could barely believe it, though Alistair shot me a wary glance, warning against being too eager.

“Hey. Shouldn’t we ask what it wants before we agree to anything?”

The tree rumbled again. This time, it really did sound almost like laughter.

_“Hmmm… I have but one desire, to solve a matter very dire. As I slept one early morn, a thief did come and steal an acorn.”_

“An acorn?” I repeated, nonplussed. A tree the size of this, and it was worried about a single acorn?

Morrigan heaved a theatrical sigh. “Hmph. And you want it back, I take it? Predictable.”

A long branch fringed with the curled husks of dry leaves arced slowly through the air beside the witch, almost as if the tree was trying to make some gesture to her. Its vast, gnarled trunk never seemed to bend much, but the upper reaches of the tree did, nodding as if there was a strong wind.

_“Hmmmm… All I have is my being, my seed. Without it I am alone indeed. I cannot go and seek it out; yet I shall die if left without.”_

Morrigan looked at me. I wasn’t used to that: she didn’t usually need or want me to contribute anything to her decisions except silence, but her expression said we had little choice here. I nodded, glancing at the others. If anyone had a problem, they didn’t speak up.

“Very well,” I said, wishing I could remember the Elvish word that Revasir had used to address the tree. It had sounded a bit like ‘hahren’, but I’d been too forcefully reminded of my lack of ability with the language to make any guesses. “We’ll help you.”

The tree lowered its branches gracefully, and made a long, low creaking hum of a sound. _“Hmmmmm…. Go to the east and find this man. I shall await… do what thou can.”_

Right. I wasn’t sure which way was east anymore, but the Dalish seemed to have that covered. Aegan laid his palm against the nearest branch and said something in Elvish—some prayer or blessing in respect, I supposed—and then they rose and began to scramble through the brush behind the tree and to the right.

It allowed us to pass it, and—taking our leave of the ancient and improbable talking tree—we filed by, heading into yet another darker, closer part of the forest, where the smell of old, damp earth and deep wood crowded on the air.

“Amazing,” Wynne breathed, shaking her head and apparently still caught up in how wonderful it was that we encountered such things.

I supposed, after a life spent in the confines of the Circle—where she’d no doubt read about arcane things stranger than any nightmare I’d ever had as a child—this probably _did_ seem like a beautiful opportunity to her. Magic held familiarity for her. Strange probably seemed normal, and she most likely revelled in all the things that were frightening the life out of me.

At that point, I felt the strongest kinship with Sten, who crashed doggedly through the brush, still weighted down with the lion’s share of our gear, his utter disgust and hatred for magic, spirits, and Ferelden’s cold, wet climate written large on his scowling face. He grumbled something under his breath and, though the word was unintelligible to me, it did tell me that Qunari was probably a marvellously satisfying language to swear in.

“This is insane,” Alistair muttered, bringing up the rear behind me.

“You don’t have to tell me that,” I said, a little snappishly for someone who was just glad he was talking to her again. “We’re looking for an acorn thief. At least it said it was a man, or I’d think we were looking for a squirrel. Who in the Maker’s name—?”

Alistair gave me one of those incredulous looks of his, clear hazel eyes wide behind the mud-streaked, weary and embittered mask of his face. “You haven’t thought about it, have you?”

I frowned, confused, and he lowered his voice, his gaze flicking to the back of Morrigan’s black-feathered robes as she picked her way through the thicket ahead of us. 

“This place is full of ancient power. Crawling with spirits. It’s impenetrable, easy to get lost… hard to be found.”

I still wasn’t following, and he sighed tersely.

“Maleficarum,” Alistair whispered. “They like hiding where the terrain gives them an advantage. I wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t whole cabals in here somewhere.”

He sounded very like a templar then. My frown deepened further.

“We haven’t seen any.”

Alistair snorted. “No. We haven’t seen the way out, either. Come on. Let’s keep moving.”

I hoisted my pack and trudged after the others, trying not to think about what he’d said.


End file.
